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A Country Romance. 



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A Country Romance. 



By P. V. COLLINS, 

EDITOR OF THE “NORTHWESTERN AGRICULTURIST,” AUTHOR OF 

“a baton for a heart,” “the financial crisis: 

A Sl-ORY OF MINNESOTA FARM LIFE OF 
1892,” ETC., ETC. 


WITH ITIvUSTRATlONS. 



J. H. Yewdale & Sons Co., Publishers, Milwaukee, Wis. 

18 %. 


1 

1 




Copyrighted 1896 

By the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Co 
Racine, Wis. 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 


DIJDICATION. 


TO TIIK 

Progressive farmer 


THIS STORY IS RESPECTFUTI.Y 
DEDICATED. 


The Author. 


% 


“These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings 
The peasants’ food, the golden pomp of kings.” 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. — Farmer Barnett meets the agent of the 
Gee Whizz Threshing Machine Co. The invitation. 

CHAPTER II. — The Barnett home. Purchase of the 
new thresher. Dorothy’s protest. 

CHAPTER III, — Opposition of the “ women folks,” 
The arrival of the new outfit. Barnett’s pride. 

CHAPTER IV. — Agent Olwin and Ed. Roster discuss 
the principles of threshing machinery. They 
disagree. 

CHAPTER V. — The evening at Barnett’s. The walk 
home with Margaret Brown. The engagement. 

CHAPTER VI. — Ed. Roster discovers that the steam 
gauge has been tampered with. Threatened 
mutiny of the threshers. Olwin knocked down. 

CHAPTER VII. — The explosion. Dorothy recovers 
her cow and' calf.- The new Case thresher and 
engine. 


CHAPTER- VIII. — Ed. Roster in charge. He explains 
the working of the new machine. Ed. Roster’s 
ambition. The elevator on wheels. The lovers’ 
hope. 

CHAPTER IX. — Olwin’s spree. The conspiracy. 
The dynamite stolen. The drunkard’s garrulous- 
ness. Suspicion aroused. 

CHAPTER X. — The burglary discovered. Rumors 
of the plot. Dorothy’s wild ride. The explosion 
of dynamite. 

CHAPTER XI. — “Is Dorothy dead?” Fred. Brown’s 
love. Double wedding. 




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«• 




A COUNTRY ROMANCE. 



CHAPTER L 



She day had been warm and sultry, 
threatening rain as evening approached, 
yet it was one of those uncertain bits of 
weather which keeps one in suspense 
apparently from pure perverseness of the 


elements. There had been no rain for 


nearly two weeks and the grass showed 
its need, the corn was curled upon its stalks, and 
the wheat was becoming more golden every hour 
under the hot August sun. 

The prospects for a bounteous crop were 
encouraging. Not since the famous yield of 
three years ago, if indeed then, had there been 
anything like what the crop of the present year 
was likely to be. What a glorious sight! The 
prairie stretched away for miles upon either side 


2 


of the road, as level as the ocean, as golden as 
the streets of Heaven itself, and as the slaty- 
clouds, crimson-lined, in billowy mass rolled up 
around the reddening sun. Old Sol bent his 
richest beams to take a lingering and well satis- 
fied look upon his summer’s work, as does an 
artist while he puts his tender finishing touches 
upon a masterpiece. 

A pillar of dust slowly moved through this 
wilderness of grain, indicating the approach of 
a team, and Farmer Barnett rode jauntily along 
the highway, his handsome bays upon a merry 
trot, homeward bound after an easy trip to 
town. For it was a light load for their strong 
limbs — a new Milwaukee Self Binder and a 
dozen packages of groceries — and as the horses 
knew that supper awaited them at the end of the 
familiar way, John Barnett gave them the lines 
and turned his thoughts to the business before 
him. 

“Brown’s wheat ought to be cut now,” he 
thought to himself as he rode by a neighbor’s 
field; “I am glad mine isn’t quite so ripe, but I 
guess I’ll go to work on that west quarter in 










I 

)' 







5 


the morning; I don’t want it to get as yellow as 
that.” 

“Whoa! I say, stranger, do I take the road to 
the left, there beyond the next house, to go to 
Jenkinsville, or keep straight on this trail?” 
inquired a somewhat citified-looking man as he 
pulled his horse to a stop opposite Mr. Barnett’s 
wagon. 

“Turn to the left and go on for about a mile 
and then turn to the right, just this side of the 
school-house,” answered Barnett. 

“How far is it from here?” 

“About six miles — no, it’s only about five 
miles from where we are now — it is six miles 
from my place.” 

“You live on that next farm?” 

“Yes.” 

“What might your name be, may I ask?” 

“Barnett — John Barnett.” 

“Oh, you are John Barnett, are you? Well, 
I’ve heard of you. They tell me you are one of 
the best farmers in the county and I guess they 
are not far wrong. That’s a mighty fine field of 
wheat you’ve got; I was noticing it as I drove 


6 


by your place, just now. Go forty bushels to the 
acre, won't it?" 

“No, I calculate it will thresh over thirty 
bushels, though,” answered Mr. Barnett mod- 
estly, yet he was pleased by the flattering repu- 
tation which the stranger attributed to him. 

“Well if that doesn’t go forty bushels to the 
acre, I’ll eat it all,” said the man in the buggy. 
“I tell you, you farmers don’t realize what a 
deceiving crop this is, this year. Why, I was 
down in southern Minnesota two weeks ago and 
they had begun threshing in some places there, 
and bless you, fields which had been estimated 
to yield twenty-five bushels per acre were aver- 
aging over thirty-five and some went as high as 
forty-two and forty-three bushels; but I tell you, 
Mr. Barnett, I haven’t seen any wheat anywhere 
that will beat yours. Why, I expect some patches 
in your field will go nearer fifty bushels than 
forty. It is wonderful! When are you going to 
begin cutting?” 

“Tomorrow, if the w.eather is favorable.” 

“Oh, the weather will be all right. Don’t you 
see how red the sun is? What are you going to 


7 


do about your threshing? Own a thresher, I 
suppose?” This supposition was expressed with 
an insinuating rising inflection, accompanied 
with a smile of evident approval. 

“No, I haven't any thresher. I calculate on 
engaging a man in town who has a machine and 
travels around these parts. I guess he can do 
my threshing as cheaply as I can. It costs too 
much money to buy a thresher when wheat is so 
low.” 

“Have you engaged your man yet?” 

“No, ril be in town again in a few days and 
I’ll see him then; that will be time enough; it 
will take some time to cut 480 acres of wheat,” 
said Barnett. 

“Yes, and mark my word, it will take some 
time to hire a thresher, too, this year. 

Why, man, don’t you know that every 
machine within 200 miles of here is 
already engaged for the next three 
months? The crops south of here are 
so much heavier than usual that 
everybody has been taken by 
prise and all the machines around this country 



8 


have been shipped south. You can’t hire a ma- 
chine on any terms before the latter part of 
November, if then. I saw that man Benson — I 
suppose he is the thresher you mean, as he is the 
only one from Jenkinsville — and he was then 
seventy-five miles south of here, and he showed 
me his order book — it was chuck full.” 

“Well, what in the world is a fellow going to 
do?” asked Barnett in dismay. 

“Oh, you can stack your wheat and thresh it 
next Christmas, I suppose, but you would do 
better to buy your own outfit. Fve got just 
what you need, Mr. Barnett. By the way, my 
name is Olwin — Dave Olwin, of Fargo, General 
Agent for the Gee Whizz Thresher & Stacker 
Company, and we have the latest and finest 
machine on the market. I tell you, she is just 
simply perfect.” 

“What kind of a machine did you say — a J. I. 
Case thresher? I’m a little hard of hearing. 
Ho, Bob, Whoa!” The horses of Farmer Bar- 
nett remembered their supper awaiting them and 
had started on impatiently. 

“Whoa! I say,” exclaimed their driver. 


“Plague take that colt. I guess Pll have to get 
a J. I. C. bit for that youngster yet to stop his 
friskiness. Yes, I know the J. I. Case thresher 
must be a good one, for everything that bears 
that name is the very l:)est of its kind. That’s 
always the case, eh, stranger?’’ 

“Oh, maybe. The Case threshers are pretty 
fair machines, but they are a little out of date, 
you know — too heavy and old fashioned, you 
know.” 

“What’s that? I thought you said you were 
the agent of the J. I. Case thresher, and you are 
the first man I ever heard say a word against any 
machine with that name. I — I — ” 

“’Scuse me, Mr. Barnett, you misunderstood 
me. I don’t have anything to do with the Case 
threshing machine. The fact is that I have a 
reputation to protect and I am too conscientious 
a man to, be connected with such a concern. 
Why, Mr. Barnett, I have three boys whom I 
am trying to bring up in truth and righteous- 
ness, and I blush to think that they may some 
day learn that once I did sell to a man a Case 
machine — it was a second-hand machine, and I 


10 


got nearly catalogue price and — well, we are all 
human, you know, Mr. Barnett — and he insisted 
upon having that old machine because his father 
and all his uncles said they had never used any 
other kind. It does beat all, what old fogies 
some fool farmers are, doesn’t it, Mr. Barnett? 
But I’m ashamed to say that I ever did sell a 
Case machine; they are the clumsiest old traps 
on the market. Why, they are like elephants as 
compared with a really modern Gee Whizz out- 
fit. Ah, there’s the beauty. Nobody buys any- 
thing but a Gee Whizz this year.” 

‘‘A what?” 

“Why, a Gee Whizz, the greatest invention 
since the cotton gin.” 

“No, I ain’t got any gin. I don’t drink, 
stranger. I am a prohibitionist. But, say, I 
never heard of your Gee Whizz machine. What 
kind of a machine may that be? Whoa, Bob!” 
And Farmer Barnett jerked his lines taut as his 
horses again essayed to proceed. 

Strange, how famous some animals are for 
good horse sense, and how sharply it contrasts 
with that of an asinine driver, for Farmer Bar- 


11 


nett’s horses looked with evident disgust upon 
the stranger, who was so inconsiderate as to 
keep them so long a mile from their oats. 

The sun had disappeared below the horizon 
and the gold in the sky had turned to russet and 
then to deep crimson and violet and gray. Stars 
were twinkling here and there in the twilight 
and still that Fargo man dilated on the wonders 
of the Gee Whizz thresher. He had even dis- 
mounted from his own buggy, and stood with 
one foot on the hub of Mr. Barnett’s wagon, with 
one hand resting carelessly on Mr. Barnett’s 
lines, while he explained the virtues of a rapid 
running engine. 

“Why, sir,” said Olwin, “that engine runs like 
a watch. All that it needs is a set of jewels and 
it would keep time better than the sun,” and then 
he laughed aloud at his own assertion. 

“Well, that reminds me that the sun’s down 
and wife will be expecting me. I’ve got to hurry 
along, for I’ve a new man for chores, and I must 
be there to tell him what to do.” 

“Gosh, it is a-gettin’ late. I had no idea it was 
so late,” exclaimed Mr. Olwin in distress. “I’ll 


12 


miss my supper at the hotel, I guess, but Fm 
glad I met you, Mr. Barnett, for I want you to 
get the benefit of that bargain in that second- 
hand thresher; it is a snap. I hope I won’t have 
a headache for loss of my supper; if I don’t I’ll 
drive out to your place in the morning. Fm 
expecting a man to meet me at Jenkinsville who 
knows all about this bargain I’m telling you 
about, and he may want to buy the machine. 
He telegraphed from Fargo, where he had gone 
to see me, and learned that I was here. He will 
be in on the midnight train to-night, but I don’t 
want him to get it, because down where he 
comes from, everybody is using the Gee Whizz 
and won’t have anything else. It wouldn’t do us 
any good in the way of an advertisement to see 
the machine go down there. What I want to 
do is to introduce it in neighborhoods where it 
hasn’t been used before and I want you to get 
that one, Mr. Barnett. You are the leading 
farmer of this county and it will do us lots of 
good to be able to say that our machine is your 
choice, you see. Oh, I will give you a mighty 
good bargain; that is our policy. 


13 


“I said to the president of our company the 
last time I conferred with him; I said: ‘Now, 
lookee here, Mr. Whizz, what I want is to fill up 
all the cracks.’ ‘What do you mean by that,’ 
said he. ‘We are selling all the machines now 
that we can make.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but we must fill 
up all the cracks — we must introduce at least one 
Gee Whizz in every county where there isn’t 
any, and we can af¥ord to sell the first one in a 
county away down low — why, let’s meet com- 
petition,, and put in the first Gee Whizz in each 
county at just the price of an ordinary Case 
thresher,’ said I. Well, Mr. Barnett, you don’t 
know the old man, do you? You would have 
laughed if you had seen him stare at me when I 
proposed to sell a Gee Whizz as low as a Case, 
but I didn’t blink; I looked him square in the 
face, and finally he took out his pencil and fig- 
ured for about five minutes. Then he called in 
the secretary of the company, and finally the 
superintendent of the shops, and they all fig- 
ured, and at last he told me he would write me 
about it after the board of directors had held a 


14 


meeting, and he did. I’ll show you that letter if 
you ever come to my office in Fargo.” 

^‘What did he say?” gasped Barnett. 

“Why, he said — Oh, dear, how my head 
throbs ; it always plays me that trick when I miss 
a meal. I guess I’m getting old. I have to be 
so regular to my meals these last few years — 
well, as I was a-saying, you ought to see that 
letter from old President Whizz. You know he 
feels toward his machine just like a father toward 
a child; it is the child of his brain, you know, 
and if there ever was a genius, that old man 
Whizz is one. He is a greater inventor than 
Edison or any of those electricians. Whew! I 
wish my head wouldn’t ache so. I’d give a dol- 
lar for a cup of hot tea.” 

“Well,” said Mr. Barnett, “turn around and 
drive back home with me. Hitch your horse to 
the back of my wagon and climb up here on the 
seat. My folks are waiting supper for me and 
you might as well stay at my house to-night.” 

“All right, Mr. Barnett, I’ll do that. Maybe 
it will stop my headache, and at any rate I 
intended to drive out in the morning, and if it 


15 


ain’t putting you to too much trouble it will just 
suit me to stop with you over night; drive on.” 

And the mule in neighbor Brown’s barn 
brayed loudly as if instinct told it of the nearness 
of a brother. 



CHAPTER II. 



OHN Barnett was not a fool. He was a 
prosperous farmer, because he was thor- 
oughly posted on the most approved 
methods of modern agriculture and a 
thorough disciple of rotation of crops 
and diversification of interests. He 
combined stock-raising and crop-raising 
and made it a point to read the latest farm 
papers and to attend farm meetings; in fact, he 
was the leading authority on more than one 
branch of farming, and his signature to any 
article in any farm paper invariably g^ve that 
article influence. In his pocket on this very 
evening he carried a letter from the editor of 
the Northwestern Agriculturist, asking him to 
contribute an article describing his experience 
in raising an enormous crop of onions — twelve 
hundred bushels per acre. 

He was a man capable of infinite painstaking, 
and conscientious in his farm work as he was in 


17 

his business dealings. He knew no way to shirk 
because shirking was cheating, and instinctively 
he kept his obligations to Nature by using every 
possible means to take the obstacles away which 
would prevent Nature from raising her largest 
crops. 

No weeds ever grew upon Barnett’s farm, sim- 
ply because the very sight of Farmer Barnett’s 
tall and robust form as he strode like a warrior 
across his fields drove terror to the pests and 
withered their treacherous souls to death; at 
least, so an envious neighbor once asserted, 
although Mr. Barnett himself claimed that it was 
because he knew what a plow and a cultivator 
and a hoe were made for. 

Mr. Barnett was about forty-five years of age, 
ruddy-faced, with a full brown beard 
covering his chin, which, however, did 
not hide the fresh glow of health or 
the merry twinkle which so frequent- 
ly shone in his brown eyes. There 
was a tradition amongst the neigh- 
bors that in John Barnett’s 
younger days he had been famous 




18 


throughout the country as a wrestler and had on 
more than one occasion taken the spunk out of 
local champions, but he claimed now that he was 
becoming “too old for such foolishness;” 
although judging from the vigor with which he 
was wont to handle his work he could still have 
given an athlete a lively tussle. 

Perhaps if his neighbors had known of the 
wrestle which he had had with a Jersey bull only 
a week before this story opens, they would have 
questioned still more his modest claim that he 
was past the age of athletics. Oh! that was a 
narrow escape, friend Barnett, and it might so 
easily have ended differently, and spoiled all my 
story besides. Why, if little Alice had not 
screamed just when she did and if you had not 
accidentally left that bit of rope in the ring in the 
bull’s nose that morning, I don’t believe even 
your strength would have tripped the beast in 
time. How the “critter” did whirl you along 
those first ten rods after you grabbed the rope as 
he went tearing after the child! But here, what 
am I writing, after all my promises not to say a 
word about it, so as not to frighten Mrs. Barnett? 

John Barnett was every whit a man. He 




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i 



21 


could look his fellow-man squarely in the face, 
whether that man were a neighbor farmer with 
a division fence between his farm and Barnett’s, 
or whether that man was a smooth-tongued 
machine agent from the heart of the city. He 
was one of Nature’s noblemen and the peer of 
any man, but Mr. Barnett’s commercial instincts 
were blunt. It is one thing to raise a crop; it is 
another thing to barter and sell. As well put 
an ox to do the work of a shepherd dog — to 
match strength of muscle and strength of char- 
acter against the cunning of a fox — as to match 
a mere crop raiser against a tricky salesman of 
the experience and astuteness of Dave Olwin 
unless the crop-raiser has the “choice of weap- 
ons,” and is fortunate enough to make the con- 
test in his own line. So when Mr. Olwin 
secured, by dint of strong hinting, the invitation 
to go home with Mr. Barnett, he considered the 
sale of a Gee Whizz thresher to him an assured 
fact, except for one contingency — the women 
folks. He was anxious about the “woman in 
the case,” and like a discreet general, he at once 
set about to size up the enemy. Oh! the money 


22 


that is not made in this world by hard working 
agents simply because “the women folks upset 
the sale.” 

Olwin was experienced. 

“You have become pretty well established in 
this part of the country, Mr. Barnett,” remarked 
Olwin, casually, as they turned into Barnett’s 
lane leading to his stable. 

“Yes, been here nigh onto twenty-two years. 
I came here with my father, who took one home- 
stead and timber claim, and I took another. We 
lived together in a shack at the corner. Then 
when I got married I built that little house you 
see yonder; that’s where my hired man sleeps 
now. Father died five years ago, and now I 
have the entire section. I built this new house 
in ’92 after the big crop of ’91. I have been mar- 
ried twenty years.” 

“Does your wife like it here?” 

“Oh, yes; her folks live three miles from here. 
She likes this place. Guess if she didn’t we’d 
move.” 

“So? Your wife’s boss, is she? I’m glad I’m 
not married; I’m my own boss; as I tell the boys. 


23 


I am head of my family sure, like the boy who 
was at the head of his class in school when all 
the rest were absent/^ 

“No,” said Mr. Barnett, “Mary isn’t boss; 
neither has she any boss. We don’t have any 
bosses in our family, Mr. Olwin.” 

“Oh, certainly, certainly, of course not — I beg 
your pardon — but as I was saying, I — I hope I’ll 
not discommode Mrs. Barnett by coming so 
unexpectedly to-night. I could have 
driven out in the morning, you know, 
but—” 

“John — Oh, John — is that you at 
the barn? Shall I bring a lantern?” 
“No, never mind, Mary, where is 
Peter?” 

“Isn’t he there with you? I thought I heard 
you talking to some one.” 

“No, he isn’t here; send him here to put away 
these horses and we’ll come right in. Supper 
spoiled by waiting? I’m as hungry as a bear.” 

And suiting his action to the word, he walked 
to the doorway where his wife stood silhouetted 
in the soft lamp-light, and gave her a bear-like 



24 


hug, but winced when she boxed his ears before 
kissing him.' 

“This is Mr. Olwin, Mary. My wife, Mr. 
Olwin,” said Mr. Barnett, suddenly assuming a 
more dignified air. 

Mrs. Barnett acknowledged the introduction 
graciously, and giving the two men an oppor- 
tunity to wash their travel-stained hands and 
faces, deftly helped the hired girl to place the 
supper upon the table. 

“Dorothy has had her supper,” Mrs. Barnett 
explained when her father noticed the absence 


•f his eighteen-year-old daughter. 
“She has an engagement to go out 
with some young folks and she 
had to eat early and get herself 
ready.” 



J 


Just then a bright-faced and 


graceful young lady entered the room 


(^o^orr/y with a bit of lace in her hand. 

“Mamma, will you please pin — She stopped 
in confusion when she beheld the visitor, gave a 
little gasp, and started to leave the room, when 
her mother laughingly said: “Mr. Olwin will 


25 


excuse you, Dorothy, I know. Won’t you, Mr. 
Olwin? This is our daughter, Dorothy, Mr. 
Olwin; I’ll go with you, Dorothy, and fix it.” 

“If she can’t, come back and I will,” said Mr. 
Olwin, gallantly. “I’ve fixed many an apron, so 
why can’t I fix lace?” 

“What kind of aprons?” asked Dorothy, puz- 
zled. 

“Threshing machine aprons.” 

“Oh, you were merely chaffing, were you?” 
retorted the girl. 

A few moments later a knock was heard at the 
door and a young man presented himself, but 
declined to enter when he found the young lady 
ready for him. Together Dorothy and her escort 
quickly departed in the direction of a laughing 
and chatting but invisible party of younk folks 
who were somewhere on the main road at the 
end of the lane. They were going to a wedding 
of two of their young neighbors. 

“Who was that man talking with your father, 
Dorothy?” asked Fred Brown, her escort, as they 
were driving along the lane toward their waiting 
friends. 


26 


‘‘Oh, he must be some kind of a machine agent 
or something,” she answered carelessly. “He 
talked about fixing threshing machine aprons.” 

“Well, that is why I asked, for I thought I 
recognized him as the man who undertook to do 
up my uncle at Breckenridge while I was visiting 
there last year, by selling him some new fan- 
dangled machine which wouldn’t thresh any 
more than a sewing machine would. Tell your 
father that that fellow is a sharper and the less he 
has to do with him the better. It cost uncle over 
$50.00 for a lawyer to make the scoundrel pay 
back the money which Uncle George had paid 
on the outfit, and then the lawyer couldn’t get it 
until he threatened to send him to jail for obtain- 
ing money under false pretenses. The thresher 
wouldn’t work at all in the heavy grain we raise 
here — it stopped dead still several times and 
choked up and was out of order nearly all the 
time. It worked all right as long as no wheat 
was given it, but just as soon as it had anything 
to do, it stuck and stopped.” 

“Well, I don’t know what he is at our house 
for, I am sure. I hope father isn’t going to buy 







29 


a threshing machine. I haven’t heard him say 
anything about it, anyhow,” remarked Dorothy. 

The wedding was duly celebrated; the young 
folks danced and enjoyed a gay evening, but by 
eleven o’clock were homeward bound, for har- 
vest time brooked no dissipation in late hours. 

What was the surprise of Dorothy upon her 
return to find the lamp still burning brightly in 
the parlor and to note through the window her 
father at the table in the act of writing upon a big 
printed sheet, while Mr. Olwin was counting 
some money, which after counting he carefully 
placed in a pocket-book and stowed away in an 
inside pocket. 

Through the door she heard Mr. Olwin’s 
heavy voice and caught the word “guarantee” 
several times and just as she opened the door her 
father was saying, “Yes, you might as well drive 
Flossy and her calf with you when you go to 
town in the morning; that will save you a trip. 
Then when the outfit arrives and we get the rig 
unloaded, we will bring it right out; I’ve plenty 
of shed room and we might just as well have it 
here as in town.” 

“Why, Father, what is he going to do with my 
Flossy and her calf?” asked Dorothy in dismay. 


30 


“Never mind now, Dorothy; you go on to 
bed,’’ answered Mr. Barnett rather pettishly and 
half shame-faced. 

“He mustn’t take my Flossy!” exclaimed the 
girl, impetuously, “and you mustn’t buy his old 
threshing machine, either — it’s a fraud — it won’t 
thresh, and — 

“Dorothy ! stop right where you are; you for- 
get yourself. I never knew you to be so rude 
and unladylike.” 

“But, Father — ” 

“Now, that will do, daughter, you had better 
go right to bed,” said her father firmly, with 
unusual severity of tone, and with the hot tears 
squeezed back from off two flaming cheeks, 
Dorothy sought her pillow, and in spite of her 
vexation was soon dreaming of brides and 
threshing machines and their aprons, and of 
ogre-like men trying to kidnap her pet calf and 
attacking their home with a whole battery of 
traction engines, which pulled the beams all out 
of the house; and just before the building fell 
upon her she awoke to hear her father knocking 
at her door and calling her to get up for breakfast. 


CHAPTER III. 



T was not a very cordial greeting which 
Mr. Olwin received from the “women 
folks” when he made his appearance at 
the breakfast table the next morning. 
Mrs. Barnett’s eyes were red and some- 
what swollen. Had she been crying? Dorothy 
would have killed their guest with a glance if 
glances could kill, providing of course that good 
manners permitted slaughter of those who are 
enjoying one’s hospitality. Yet it could not be 
said that Olwin exactly came under that cate- 
gory, for he certainly did not seem to be enjoy- 
ing anything during the almost wordless break- 
fast. As soon as the meal was finished he hast- 
ened to call for his horse, and making an excuse 
that he must reach the man who had come from 
Fargo to Jenkinsville to meet him, he hurried 
away. 

When the broad, bright day had dawned, and 
especially when the agent had taken his depart- 


32 


lire, Mr. Barnett’s confidence in the wisdom of 
his transaction was shaken. He did not acknowl- 
edge this to himself, much less to his wife and 
daughter, but — well — if it had not been for the 
fear that that other man who was coming to 
Jenkinsville that night to secure the bargain 
would get it away from him, he would not have 
purchased the machine without first seeing it 
tested; but he had Mr. Olwin’s positive guaran- 
tee, and that certainly ought to be safe enough. 
Mr. Olwin looked an honest man, and besides, 
he represented (he said) a very large company, 
composed of prominent men. 

And so Mr. Barnett was fain to argue himself 
into a feeling of self-justification, although he 
was wise enough throughout the next two weeks 
to avoid the subject of threshing in the presence 
of his family. 

Then on Saturday night he drove from Jenk- 
insville with a feeling of great relief. He had 
actually seen his new machine unloaded from a 
car at the railroad station. 

It was gay. 

It was not so large as the old style J. I. Case 


33 


machine which his neighbors used, and it was 
lighter in every respect. He looked it over with 
the pride of a captain of an ocean steamer at 
the launching of his new craft. How beautiful it 
looked! The red paint was the brightest he had 
ever seen and the gilt lettering, with blue and 
green and yellow ornamentation, was certainly 
very handsome. 

Ah, that showed how well every part of the 
work was finished! 

On each side of the thresher was a real oil 
painting of a water-fall — why, the pictures were 
pretty enough to frame and hang up in the par- 
lor! 

And the engine, too, was a beauty! He had 
never seen an engine with so much gold or pol- 
ished brass on it. It was as graceful as a grey- 
hound — so light and handsome. Several farmers 
stopped to admire the new rig and to envy Mr. 
Barnett. No wonder he felt like a peacock with 
an added hue to its tail feathers! 

He was completely disgusted, however, with 
old man Benson — the father of the man who 
made a business of going around threshing. He 


34 


had never known before what an old fogy Bengt 
Benson was. Why, the old moss-back stood 
looking at the engine a while, and finally asked 
if ‘'that thar thing was one of them new-fangled 
automobile horseless wagons,^^ and whether the 
passengers rode inside of the fire-box — the old 
idiot! Then when Mr. Barnett told him it was 
his new traction engine, he sniffed just as though 
he was disgusted and said it wouldn’t pull a 
lawn-mower. He made fun of the thresher, too, 
and claimed that it was too small and light. How 
people’s prejudices for old machines do make 
them blind to improvements! 

Mr. Barnett, however, was elated. He was 
fortunate, too, in hiring threshers that very after- 
noon. Seven or eight came into town on the 
same train which hauled his machine; they had 
seen the machine as the train passed over the 
road, and accompanied it. Mr. Barnett quickly 
hired them at $1.50 a day, and he picked up 
others about town. He received a letter from 
Mr. Olwin, saying that an expert and himself 
would come to Jenkinsville on the Sunday night 
train, and that they would fire up and bring the 


35 


rig out early Monday morning; it would not take 
over two hours to bring it out the seven miles 
and they could set it and have it all ready for 
threshing by noon time. 

All this was singularly fortunate, because Mr. 
Barnett had just finished cutting on Friday, and 
if he got to threshing by Monday he could finish 
in less than two weeks, and then he could thresh 
for his neighbors and make a good deal toward 
paying the balance on the machine this fall; so 
thought Mr. Barnett to himself. 

Mr. Olwin had told him of 
one man who had made enough 
in one season to pay for the 
Gee Whizz rig complete, and 
what had been done might be 
done again. 

It was a strong temptation for Barnett to go to 
town on Sunday — he did propose to his wife that 
they should drive in to hear the new Jenkinsville 
minister. Rev. Golightly — but Mrs. Barnett knew 
that the church of Rev. Golightly was danger- 
ously near the railroad station where the new 
thresher stood, and she insisted on attending ser- 



36 


vice as usual in the little country church near 
home. 

It was a hard day, anyhow, for Mrs. Barnett; 
although she had extra help to cook during har- 
vest time, she was glad when night came. 

Monday dawned clear and cool, and Mr. Bar- 
nett was up betimes nervously bossing the men 
and hustling about the farm. 

Just in the midst of breakfast Mr. Barnett sud- 
denly stopped eating — “Hush! Listen!” he 
exclaimed excitedly. Everybody stopped talking 
and listened, but nothing could be heard at first. 
Presently Mr. Barnett arose, went to the door- 
way and listened. “I thought I heard the puffing 
of an engine,” he exclaimed finally. “I wouldn’t 
be surprised at any minute now if — 

“Here she is! Here she is!” shouted one of 
the men, and just then, as clear as a chanticleer 
the whistle of the new Gee Whizz sounded a 
bugle call across the Barnett farm, and the horses 
and cows in the pasture scampered in great panic 
beyond the barn and out of sight. 

Then all was confusion and excitement. No 
more time for breakfast. The Gee Whizz had 
come! Hooray! 





I 



4 





V 


s 

I 







\ 


/ 


4 


« 




CHAPTER IV. 


The next two hours were occupied in setting 
the threshing outfit and getting everything in 
readiness to begin work immediately after din- 
ner. 

One of the threshers asked Mr, Olwin how the 
mud got upon the hub of one of the drive wheels 
of the engine, and another at the same time 
informed him that his coat sleeve was torn and 
muddy and the side of his hat crushed. 

To all these remarks Olwin turned a deaf ear, 
until one of the men asked if he had any trouble 
coming out with the rig. To this Olwin 
responded with a volley of profanity which 
utterly shocked Mr. Barnett, elder as he was in 
the Presbyterian Church, and the head of a fam- 
ily. 

Something seemed to ail the tailing elevator 
and Mr. Barnett had tried to tighten the belt in 
vain. 

“Where is that expert you were going to send 


40 


out to set this machine?” Mr. Barnett finally 
asked of Olwin. 

Olwin muttered some sort of an answer too 
indistinctly for Mr. Barnett to understand, and 
the question was repeated presently. 

This exasperated Olwin, who replied pettishly 
with more or less profanity: “The chump must 
have been drunk, for he ran the engine into a 
ditch down there by the school house and threw 
me off the platform into the mud, and it made me 
so mad that I ‘fired him bodily’ and sent him 
back to town.” 

Dinner-call interrupted the work of getting the 
rig into running order, but by three o’clock 
everything was ready and Olwin bravely shouted, 
“Let ’er go Gallagher!” and the pitchers tossed 
the bundles upon the feed-board and Mr. Barnett 
stepped back, with his thumbs in his vest, so as 
to see the thing work. 

But it didn’t work. 

It ran a few minutes apparently all right, and 
then it kept going more and more slowly — still 
more slowly. Olwin shouted to the engineer to 
give her more steam, and finally with a curse he 


41 


told the engineer to get away from the engine 
and let him run it. The first thing he did was to 
note that the steam gauge showed 102 pounds 
pressure. He adjusted the gauge a little, and 
although he built a hotter fire, the gauge then 
showed only sixty-six pounds, and now he said it 
was no wonder it would not work with only 
sixty-six pounds pressure. 

The engineer said something about ‘‘monkey- 
ing with the steam gauge,” but Olwin shut him 
up by calling him a liar and pointing to the 
gauge itself. The engineer wanted to fight, and 
Mr. Barnett promptly discharged him and 
ordered him off the farm. He took his pay and 
remarked that he would not stay within a mile 
of that engine for $1Q0.00 a day, and he certainly 
did lose no time in leaving the farm. 

Then Mr. Olwin ordered the feeders to ease up 
on the feeding and go more slowly “until the 
machine gets used to the work,” he exclaimed. 

The day was passing; it was nearly five o’clock 
and they had not yet threshed more than twenty- 
five bushels. 

“Now I can’t be with you to-morrow,” said 


42 


Olwin to Mr. Barnett, “and so I’ll show you all 
about the machine to-day so that you can run it 
yourself to-morrow. Climb up here with me and 
let me show you the thresher first. You see that 
cylinder? Isn’t it simple? You will observe that 
it has fewer teeth than those in the old style 
thresher; that is because it runs so much more 
rapidly and it doesn’t need so many teeth. The 
cylinder revolves 1,400 to 1,500 revolutions per 
minute.” 



“Ach, by Chiminee, dot cylinder vood 
go fast genug it vood zeparad dot cream 
from dot skimmed milk in der creamery, 
don’t it, eh?” asked Otto Bismarck, or 
“Little Dutch,” as the crew called him. 
“Oh, come off, Dutchee; we’ll use this 
for a kraut cutter and sausage grinder in the win- 
ter,” called one of the men, and Otto, good- 
naturedly, asked, “So?” 

“What light boxes this machine has!” 
remarked one of the threshers. 

“Yes, indeed,” answered Olwin, complacently. 
“You see nothing clumsy about this outfit; you 
can bet on that. The boxes are all light, but 


43 


they are made so skillfully that they do just as 
well as heavy boxes, and there is just that much 
less weight to haul.” 

“Why, feilows, we have been threshing all day 
without any chaffer. Look here, there isn’t any 
chaffer in the machine at all,” exclaimed one of 
the feeders who had been peering at the inside 
construction curiously for some time. 

“Where is the chaffer, Mr. Olwin?” he asked. 

“Don’t want any chaffer in this machine. We 
find that the chaffer is a nuisance, so we dis- 
carded it altogether,” retorted Olwin. 

“You see, Mr. Barnett,” Olwin explained, 
“when the grain passes onto the riddles after 
leaving the cylinder, the Gee Whizz is so 
arranged that the fan throws a blast in the center 
so as to scatter the grain and chaff on the rid- 
dles. This is one of the great improvements over 
the old style thresher.” 

“What’s that, Uncle John? What’s this new 
wrinkle?” and a young man whose approach 
across the field had not been observed, now 
climbed upon the thresher with Mr. Barnett and 
Olwin. 


44 


“Why, Ed. Roster, where did you come from?” 
exclaimed Mr. Barnett, jovially, as he slapped 
the young man upon the shoulder and then 
shook hands with him. 

“Oh, I just blew in. That wonderful fan this 
man is telling you about wafted me into the cen- 
ter of the circle, you see. Eh, Uncle John?” 

“No, I don’t see. I thought you were at the 
Agricultural College.” 

“So I was, but I have graduated, and besides, it 
is now vacation time, you know.” 

“Well, then, I thought you were 
igoing back to Wisconsin to work in 
some machine shop or other, where 
you worked last summer. Wouldn’t 
they have you again?” 

“Oh, yes. Uncle John; they 
were so willing to have me that 
when the foreman of the engine 
department was sick last month, I took 
his place and was in charge of the work 
directly under the superintendent for two weeks, 
and the superintendent assured me that I did the 
work as well as their regular man. The super- 




45 


intendent himself, of course, inspected all of my 
work, but say. Uncle John, what sort of a con- 
traption have you here?” asked Ed. 

“This is a new Gee Whizz thresher, young 
man. Do you know the difference between a 
thresher and a typewriter?” answered Olwin, 
who had been busily adjusting the riddles, and 
had not overheard the conversation between Ed. 
and his uncle. 

“Well, perhaps I don’t between a Gee Whizz 
and a typewriter — especially if you mean type- 
writer girl. Some of them are too Gee Whizz 
for me to use as my family threshers, but what is 
this Gee Whizz good for? What do you do with 
it? Is it a model or a real machine?” asked Ed., 
sarcastically, for he had taken a personal dislike 
to Olwin at his first greeting, and this feeling 
was evidently mutual. ‘ 

“This is our largest size, sir,” responded 
Olwin, somewhat nonplussed by the new comer. 

“Oh, well, I was only joking, you know,” Ed. 
answered, apologetically, for he had no desire to 
be impertinent. “I heard you explaining some- 
thing about the nev/ fan which you say scatters 


46 


the grain evenly upon the riddles, just as I came 
up. What is the use of all of that? When the 
grain passes the beater, doesn’t that distribute 
the straw eyenly upon the racks and riddles? It 
does in the J. I. Case machine, I know — why 
doesn’t it in this?” 

‘‘Oh, well, you may find a good many features 
about this machine different from the old Case 
machine.” 

“Different? But is it better to have a fan 
when the thing which the fan is claimed to do is 
already done by the other apparatus? What is 
the use of the extra complication?” 

“My dear sir, I can’t undertake to teach you 
the first principles of mechanics. When you get 
to be as old as I am, you will know more,” 
remarked Olwin. “Now, Mr. Barnett,” he con- 
tinued, “you will sometimes find it convenient to 
take the grain out from one side of the machine, 
and sometimes from the other, so, you see, we 
use a spout which you can tip to either side. It 
is much better than the old style auger.” 

“At least, it costs less to make,” added Ed. 
Roster. 


47 


“Then you see this tailing elevator. How 
nicely it is adjusted, so that it does not require a 
clumsy belt; just this light leather belt is suffic- 
ient to elevate all the tailings that come into it.” 

“Except when the belt stretches and slips,” 
suggested Ed. “Is it as sure to deliver all the 
tailings as a heavy belt would be?” 

“It is sure enough and it takes less power to 
run a light machine than it does a heavy one,” 
answered Olwin. 

“But when the belt slips, the tailings clog and 
finally stop the machine, don’t they?” asked Ed. 

“Not if the machine is kept going rightly.” 

“Naturally not, but when the elevator clogs 
and the belt slips off, it don’t keep a-going, does 
it?” 

“Now here is a feature to which I want to call 
your attention, Mr. Barnett,” said Mr. Olwin, 
ignoring Ed.’s last remark. “John, start the 
engine slowly. See the motion of the shoe — it is 
a regular side-shake, you see, don’t you? Ah, 
there is the secret of its good, clean separating 
qualities. Now, the side-shake allows the wind 
to cross the path of the grain at right angles to 


48 


the motion, and so it blows all the chaff out.” 

“And hammers out the sides of the separator 
the first season,” interrupted Ed. 

“The side-shake breaks up the mass and sep- 
arates the grain from the chaff, better than the 
end - shake,” continued Olwin, ignoring the 
interruption. 

“Oh, pshaw, Mr. Olwin; why not have a 
machine with force enough in it to enable the 
end-shake, which will not thump and hammer 
the sides, to stir up the chaff and grain? That 
side-shake racket is all right theoretically or to 
sell by, but don’t you agree with me that it is 
merely a change to avoid the Case patents, and 
that its whole practical value lies in the fact that 
it is “different,” but not better than the Case end- 
shake? The end-shake shoe used in the Agitator 
puts the strain on the machine in the direction of 
its greatest power of resistance, whereas that side - 
shake of your Gee Whizz will hammer out the 
sides in one season and strain the whole machine 
so that it has no durability, won’t it? If I were 
a betting man Td bet you the price of this 
machine that it wouldn’t last two years.” 






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51 


“Now, look here, young man, I want you to 
get down off this machine and attend to your 
own business.” 

“Whose machine is this?” asked Ed. 

“It belongs to me until it is paid for,” 
answered Olwin, angrily. 

“And you agree to sell it to Uncle John under 
a guarantee that it will thresh all kinds of grain?’* 

“I guarantee that it will thresh grain as well 
as any machine in the world.” 

“And under your guarantee, if it fails to do so, 
you are to pay back to Uncle John whatever he 
has paid on the machine?” 

“Of course I do, sir. My company is one of 
the largest and most responsible in the country, 
and what we say, we mean.” 

“That is why I am here.” 

“What’s that?” asked Olwin, surprised. 

“I say that that is why I am here. I heard that 
Uncle John had agreed to buy a new fangled 
Gee Whizz machine, and I decided that as I had 
been studying this subject more than he had, I 
would find out something about the new 
machine. So I wrote to Gov. Ben Johnson — yon 


52 


know the ex-Governor of Minnesota, don^t you? 
He went into office six years ago as the farmers’ 
candidate — “Honest Ben,” some call him — 
“The Bonanza King’s Hired Man,” some others 
called him in the campaign because he was the 
superintendent of a bonanza farm. You know 
him, don’t you?” 

“Of course I do. I sold him one of the first 
Gee Whizz machines sold in the state,” answered 
Olwin. 

“Excuse me, you mean you gave it to him, 
don’t you?” asked Ed. quietly. 

“No — well, yes — he is an old friend of mine, 
and I wanted him to try it, of course.” 

“And expected him to endorse it and so adver- 
tise it, didn’t you?” 

“Well, whatever Governor Johnson says about 
farm machinery is always of influence, of course, 
but there was no promise exacted. He was left 
to say just what he thought. I have often 
thought I’d write to him and find out how he 
liked it, but I never did.” 

“I’ll save you that trouble,” remarked Ed., 
casually. “I have a letter here from Governor 


53 


Johnson, which he wrote me last week, in 
response to my inquiry; but perhaps I had better 
not read it here in the presence of these men.” 

“Yes, let’s hear the letter,” called out Irish 
Jim. “Read it out; let’s hear Old Honest Ben’s 
opinion.” 

“’Rah for Governor Ben !” shouted the thresh- 
ers, crowding about. 

“No, you might say this was a political caucus, 
but I will read a letter from an old farmer down 
in Nicollet County, Frank Rogers. Do you 
know him?” 

“Yes, I know too much about him. I wouldn’t 
trust him under oath,” said Olwin. 

“That may be,” answered Ed., “but he is one 
of the regents of the University, and the profes- 
sors at the Agricultural College tell me he is one 
of the best farmers in the Northwest. He wrote 
me that you guaranteed your machine to thresh 
grain — all kinds of grain — and he tried it last 
year in flax, and it failed entirely.” 

“Flax isn’t grain.” 

“What’s that? You guaranteed to me that this 
machine would thresh my flax,” said Mr. Barnett. 


54 


“I said it would thresh any grain that any 
other machine would,” replied Olwin. 

‘‘But your printed guarantee says “all kinds 
of grain.” 

“Flax is a seed, not a grain,” said Olwin. 

“But the Supreme Court of Ohio and other 
supreme courts have decided that a machine 
which is guaranteed to thresh all kinds of grain 
must thresh flax. That is where you and the 
Supreme Court differ, eh?” asked Ed. 

“Well how about those letters?” insisted Irish 
Jim, “’Rah for Honest Ben Johnson!” 

“’Rah for Johnson,” chimed in Ole Olson and 
Swan Bengston. 

Ed. finally read both letters and also several 
others which he had received from competent 
and experienced threshing men, relating in detail 
one failure after another of the Gee Whizz 
machines, and all the letters stated that before 
the close of one season the machines had racked 
themselves so out of line that they were useless. 

Mr. Olwin blustered and swore and stormed 
and raved and finally accused Ed. of having 
forged the letters. He might have had to swal- 


65 



low this charge, for Irish Jim was an old friend 
of Ed.’s and he liked nothing better than a fight. 
He was just doubling his big fists and 
gleaming viciously from beneath beet- ^ 
led brows when the safety-valve of 
the engine shot open with an explo- 
sive report like that of a gun, and 
Olwin, with a frightened bound, 
jumped from the top of the thresher to 
the ground, and ran to the engine. He quickly 
jerked open the furnace-door, set the injector 
to work, and closed the draughts nervously. 
Some of the men noticed his extreme nervous- 
ness and were joking about it until one of the 
feeders, who happened to be standing near the 
engine, came up to his comrades, looking rather 
grave, and said something to them in an under- 
tone, while pointing over his shoulder toward the 
engine. 

There followed then an earnest consultation 
amongst the men, and others of the crew joined 
the first little knot until Olwin roughly ordered 
them to go to their places and prepare to start 
the machine. There was a moment’s hesitancy. 


56 


but then they went, each man to his duty. Again 
the safety valve blew open with a pop 
and the steam hissed angrily. Instantly every 
man fled with panicky face to the rear of the 
stack. Even Olwin himself disappeared, and 
when Ed. Roster turned from attending to the 
engine, Olwin sneaked out from under the 
thresher exclaiming sheepishly that he thought 
there was a monkey-wrench under there. 

Olwin alone knew that when that safety valve 
opened it was because the steam had risen to 
about 200 pounds pressure instead of 100 pounds, 
as the gauge indicated. 

Only Olwin realized the danger, for he was the 
cause of it. 

By this time it had grown too dark to thresh 
and work was discontinued for the night, much 
to the relief of all concerned. 

Mr. Olwin, however, announced before shut- 
ting down that he would remain over night and 
start the men on the work in the morning, and 
it was agreed that he should instruct Ed. Roster 
how to run the Gee Whizz engine. 


CHAPTER V. 


D. ROSTER was Dorothy’s favorite 
cousin, and so she was in a merry 
mood because of his unexpected 
visit. Ed. was such a tease that she 
used to dread his coming, much as 
she liked him, but of late years he 
had shown more consideration for 
her sensibilities, and they had become great 
friends and confidants. The truth is, Dorothy 
was proud of her handsome cousin, who had 
grown so tall and manly, and even if she did 
banter him on the lack of a mustache and coax 
him to let her part his hair in the middle she 
liked his frank, clean-cut face, with its sharp gray 
eyes and high forehead, and she had reason to 
know from the grip of his good right hand that he 
was not to be trifled with. And then Ed. was so 
gentlemanly, kind and sympathetic. He had 
often driven with Dorothy and her friend, Mar- 
garet Brown, to choir practice, though he was 
not a member of the choir and could not sing a 



58 


note, and Margaret agreed with Dorothy in say- 
ing that this showed how unselfish a man Mr. 
Roster was. Of course it was nice now that 
Margaret’s brother Fred, was at home to go with 
them, for Fred, had such a good voice and he was 
such a help to the choir, but as Fred. Brown and 
Ed. Roster were within reach to-night — 

“Oh, Ed.,” called Dorothy from the dining- 
room, as she was cleaning off the table. 
“Wouldn’t it be nice if Margaret and Fred would 
come over this evening? Won’t you go over and 
invite them?” 

“With pleasure, but can’t you come along? 
I am sure Fred would come if you should invite 
him yourself. Come along. Dot., let’s go over 
together.” 

“I won’t go a step, sir, if you are going to 
tease me,” retorted Dorothy, blushing violently. 

“Come along, come along; I won’t tease you 
any more. I didn’t know I was treading on such 
dangerous ground.” 

“Oh, you mean, mean fellow,” cried the girl, 
as she untied her apron, and suddenly bound it 
over his face to smother his provoking words, 


59 


and then ere he could scramble after her she 
darted out of the room and upstairs, only to 
return again a moment later, with a white fascin- 
ator thrown over her shoulders, when she 
announced that she was ready. 

Her cheeks were still aglow and her eyes were 
somewhat averted from Cousin Ed. when she 
told him that she was willing to go, and Ed. 
thought, as she said it, that he had never seen her 
quite so pretty. In fact, he had never seen any- 
body quite so pretty as his graceful little cousin, 
except Margaret, but he had the frankness to 
acknowledge that there might be men who would 
even prefer Dorothy’s liquid brown eyes and 
brown hair to Margaret’s golden tresses and 
laughing eyes of blue, but that was a tremendous 
strain on the young man’s breadth of judgment 
of femininity. 

Still Dorothy was truly graceful and attractive, 
he was bound to confess, as he watched her 
sauntering ahead beside Fred. Brown a half hour 
later, and he had to agree with Margaret that 
Dorothy and Fred, made a “good-looking 
couple,” but Ed. had lately been utterly incap- 


60 


able of disagreeing with any proposition that 
Margaret had laid down; hence it would not be 
expected that he would refuse to do justice to 
his own cousin — not there on that summer twi- 
light walk along the river bank with Margaret’s 
hand upon his arm — of course not. 

When they reached home they found Mr. and 
Mrs. Barnett seated upon the broad porch in 
front, with Mr. Olwin, and after Fred, and Mar- 
garet had been introduced to the stranger they 
all seated themselves upon the steps and chatted 
awhile as the twilight gathered. The young 
folks always liked to talk with Mrs. Barnett, for 
though she was nearly the same age as her hus- 
band — two score and three years — she had not 
yet outlived her youthful spirits and could always 
enter into their pleasures with a zest equal to 
the best of them. Margaret Brown was partic- 
ularly fond of Mrs. Barnett. She chose her seat 
upon the step close to her feet, and laid her hand 
upon Mrs. Barnett’s lap, while she told her of the 
hope of inducing her father to send her East to 
pursue her musical education during the coming 
winter, now that crops were so fine. 


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‘‘Brother Fred, wants me to go,” said Mar- 
garet, “but he says he is afraid that the crops are 
so large that prices will be low. Do you think 
they will, Mr. Barnett?” 

“No one can tell what the speculators will do 
with prices,” answered Mr. Barnett. 

“Those things will right themselves, Mr. Bar- 
nett,” remarked Olwin. “You have marvelous 
crops here in the Northwest, but, don’t you 
know this Red River Valley, and in fact all the 
wheat region of the United States, is only a drop 
in the bucket in the markets of the world?” 

“Is that why they call speculator’s offices 
‘bucket-shops?’ ” asked Dorothy, at which every- 
body laughed, and Fred. Brown proceeded to 
explain to her how the bucket-shops were oper- 
ated by gamblers who had about as much to do 
with the supply and demand of the actual market, 
as the United States Secretary of Agriculture 
had to do with controlling the rain-fall in Alaska. 

Fred, was an earnest teacher and Dorothy a 
willing learner, and she wondered how Fred, had 
learned so much, though she did occasionally feel 
confused by his abstruse explanation, and sud- 


64 


denly she realized that they, two, sitting together 
upon the lower steps, had become so absorbed 
in their tete-a-tete talk that they had ceased to 
be identified with the general conversation. 
Fearful of Cousin Ed.’s teasing, she hastened to 
appeal to Mr. Olwin from Fred.’s’ last remark, 
asking for verification of his statement, although 
it would have been sacrilege to her if Mr. Olwin 
had dared to dispute Mr. Brown. 

“Is it so, Mr. Olwin, that the wheat specu- 
lators in Liverpool fix the price on wheat in Min- 
nesota?” she asked. 

“Oh, I didn’t say that, Dorothy,” interrupted 
Fred. “I said that the quotations from Liver- 
pool affected the quotations of all American 
markets, and — ” 

“Well, isn’t that the same thing?” 

“No, for the report of the supply of wheat in 
America and in all other parts of the world are 
what influence and fix the Liverpool prices, and 
so — ” 

“Oh my, you are getting too deep now for 
such a warm evening. Come and help me cut a 
watermelon, Fred., and I’ll give you the core of 


65 


it,” and up she sprang from her seat beckoning 
him to follow, which he did with alacrity. 

It took a wonderfully long time to cut that 
melon, and the rest of the folks called out to 
know if they were not to share in it. 

“Haven’t you got that melon’s heart cut out 
yet, F'red?” cried Ed. “If I couldn’t extract a 
heart in less time than that. I’d — ” 

“Continue to sit on the front steps wishing you 
knew how,” remarked Mrs. Barnett, as she 
leaned over and boxed Ed.’s ears. 

“Oh, Aunt Mary, what have I ever done to 
you?” exclaimed the young man, while Margaret 
turned to Mr. Olwin and asked if this was his 
first visit to this part of the country. 

“Now we are ready! Will you partake of the 
finest melon we have cut this summer? 

It’s just luscious, isn’t it, Fred?” said Dor- 
othy as they appeared in the parlor door- 
way, Fred, bearing a large server with the 
sliced melon upon it, while Dorothy 
brought plates and forks for all. 

While they were in the midst of their 
melon feast, they were interrupted and very 





66 


much surprised by the arrival of George Jackson 
and his bride, who had returned home, the day 
before, from their wedding trip. 

This was the couple whose wedding Dorothy 
had attended on the evening of the first visit of 
Mr. Olwin and the purchase of the Gee Whizz 
thresher. None of the party had known of their 
return until they called so unceremoniously. 
Their arrival was the occasion of new joviality, 
and Ed. was soon relating how long it had taken 
Fred, to secure that heart — the watermelon’s 
heart, of course, — and he appealed with mock 
seriousness to Mr. Jackson as “an old and 
experienced married man” for his opinion 
whether there was any reason why such a waste 
of time should be tolerated. 

Mr. Jackson said that there might be reason 
in 1895, but he was quite confident that it should 
not take so long in 1896, as that was leap 
year. Still, so far as he could recall “his 
younger days, before he had become a Benedict,” 
he was convinced that in leap year or any other 
year there was entirely too much beating about 
the bush, and his advice to all young men, now 


67 


since he was married, has been, “go thou and do 
likewise.” 

“It is a pity I didn’t meet you a long time ago 
then, Mr. Jackson,” remarked Mr. Olwin, pres- 
ently. “See what a mistake I have made, and yet 
I am alive and well-fed, you see.” 

“Yes, but think of that mate who was designed 
for you, and who is still single on your account; 
why don’t you do your duty and marry her?” 
asked Mrs. Barnett. 

“With your kind permission, I think I can 
answer that better with piano accompaniment, 
Mrs. Barnett,” he replied. Arising and entering 
the parlor, he seated himself at the piano and 
played a few notes of prelude, and 
then surprised the company by 
singing in a clear, rich baritone, 
“A Ballad of a Bachelor,” which 
brought forth the hearty applause 
of the whole party. 

He then apologized for his bold- 
ness in playing, and begged Miss 
Brown to favor the company with 
some music. The request was heartily seconded 



68 


by Ed. and Mrs. Barnett, and seating herself at 
the instrument, she asked Ed. what he would 
like. 

“Play my favorite, please,” Ed. replied, and she 
at once began a low, sweet melody, which 
seemed pathetic in its gentleness, then grew 
stronger and more fervent, and filled the room 
with a torrent of music, as the great throbbing of 
passion, then died away, revived, and again grew 
fainter and ceased. 

Her technique was superb, but withal she was 
in the mood for playing to-night, and the piece 
suited her mood. She played as she had never 
played before, and there was not one in the 
room who was not astonished at her power. 

Mr. Roster said nothing while the others were 
complimenting her so enthusiastically; in fact, he 
was unusually silent during the rest of the even- 
ing, though he seemed ever present at the side 
of Miss Brown, and when the time for her return- 
ing home arrived, he told Fred, that he needn’t 
hurry, as his sister did not need his escort. 

It was only a mile over to the Brown farm- 
house, but the clouds were veiling the harvest 


69 


moon now and it was a long walk in the flitter- 
ing light and darkness on that August night. 

Ed. was very quiet and Margaret tried in vain 
to talk of commonplace topics when they first 
started home, but then it grew harder and harder 
to hide the mutual consciousness of their love, 
and just how it all came about, neither Ed. nor 
Margaret nor the Man in the Moon could tell, 
even if they would, but ere they had passed the 
first bend in the river path, Ed. had taken Mar- 
garet’s fluttering hand into his own — and some- 
how they were engaged. 

But Ed. did not return to the Barnetts by the 
path Fred. Brown took, and so the boys did not 
meet again that night, and neither knew when 
the other reached his room. 



CHAPTER VI. 


Toot! Toot! Toot-oo-oot! clear and piercing 
sang the whistle of the Gee Whizz engine at sun- 
rise next morning. Ed. Roster had risen with 
the lark and long before Mr. Olwin or any of the 
men had shaken the dreams out of their tired 
heads Ed. had been down in the threshing field 
and had overhauled the engine and thresher with 
no one nigh to hinder. 

He had made some surprising discoveries, too, 
not the least of which was the fact that the safety 
valve had been screwed down so hard that it was 
almost as tight as the cylinder head, while the 
steam gauge had been so adjusted that its read- 
ings were entirely false, and he saw, too, that 
both had been so arranged deliberately and with 
a purpose. 

His contempt for the light and cheap thresher 
gave place to indignation at the murderous deceit 
of the man, who in order to foist a profitable sale 
upon his uncle, would risk not only his own life 


71 


but the lives of fifteen or twenty hard-working 
threshermen by exposing them to the imminent 
danger of a boiler explosion. 

Toot-a-toot-too-oo-oot! sang out the whistle. 
Ed. had tested the engine and measured its real 
capacity and he gave a note of defiance now to 
warn Mr. Olwin that he was discovered. 

The sound made Olwin furious. What right 
had this whipper-snapper to get up steam and 
meddle with the machinery without asking his 
instructions. He hurried into his clothes and 
rushed half-dressed out into the field to put a 
stop to such impertinence, but just as he 
approached the machine he met Mr. Barnett and 
Ed. Roster coming toward the house for break- 
fast. 

“Lookee here, young man, I want you to 
understand that I am running that engine until 
I show you how, and I don’t want any interfer- 
ence — ” 

‘'Mr. Barnett, if you please, we would like our 
pay,” said the foremost of a half a dozen 
threshers who had been standing near the barn 
in consultation. They refused at first to explain 


72 


their reasons for striking, but finally the fore- 
man confessed that he had discovered Olwin 
yesterday tampering with the steam gauge and 
safety valve and that the men were afraid to work 
under him. It came near ending in a fight. The 
lie was passed and Olwin would have been 
roughly handled had it not been that Ed. inter- 
vened and showing his license as a competent 
engineer proposed as a compromise that he 
should run the engine while Olwin should super- 
intend the running of the thresher. 

Somehow Ed.’s open countenance and frank 
good humor seemed to inspire the men with con- 
fidence in him from the beginning and as much 
as Olwin chafed under the unexpected turn of 
affairs he was forced into acquiescence, and after 
breakfast the work began. Ed. gave the engine 
all the steam he dared and it puffed and snorted 
like a poodle dog behind the fence, but just as 
soon as the gate was thrown open and its savage 
snorts were expected to tear things to pieces the 
engine “laid down” (as the men expressed it) and 
no matter what momentum it had gained, as 
soon as the grain was crowded into the thresher 


73 


the hum of the cylinder sang a lower and lower 
note, until it reached several octaves below the 
scale and stopped. 

In vain did Olwin swear and pour on the oil; 
in vain did he tighten the belts and call to the 
feeders to feed slowly; in vain, too, did he abuse 
Ed. for not “giving her more steam;” but the 
young engineer was not to be bullied while he 
stood complacently before the steam gauge 
which now honestly registered 100 pounds and 
watched the safety valve which was sensitive to 
a pressure of 105 pounds. 

Once, when Mr. Barnett had gone to the 
house, Olwin lost all control of his temper, and 
with curses — long and deep — advanced upon Ed. 
with the threat to “teach him some sense,” but 
he had passed over only half the distance when 
“Irish Jim,” the red-headed farm hand, put out 
his foot before the enraged agent, and “tipped 
him one behint the lift ear, begorrah,” and landed 
him squarely into the water barrel, while the men 
sent up such a jeer and a cheer that when Olwin 
picked himself up he stalked off the field a 
damper and a madder man than he had been for 
years. 


74 


He was seen no more by any. of the crew, and 
well, indeed, it was for him that such was the 
case, as may be comprehended when my readers 
shall have read the next chapter. 

Mr. Barnett soon returned to the threshing 
field, worried and vexed by the failure of the new 
machine, and determined to call the agent to 
account for his guarantee, but Agent Olwin had 
disappeared and the men were still standing in 
idle groups laughing and joking over the recent 
episode. 

“Begorrah, if we kin’t thresh whate, we kin 
thresh a chate!” exclaimed Jim, as he spat on his 
hands and squared off to show the men for the 
tenth or eleventh time how he had done it, and 
the men laughed again as lustily as at the orig- 
inal exhibition. 

“Now, lookee here. Uncle,'’ said Ed. as Mr. 
Barnett approached, “there is no use fooling 
with this toy any longer. It is not built to thresh 
with, but to sell. It is weak at just the points at 
which it ought to be strong; its mechanical prin- 
ciples are faulty from one end to the other, and I 
believe I can convince you of the fact in a very 


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77 


few moments, for I have been studying it over 
carefully. 

“Look at this engine; it is about right to run a 
Belle City feed cutter or a buzz saw. It won’t 
develop more than six or seven horse-power to 
save it, and even then it has to be oversped so 
that it would soon tear itself to pieces. It 
wouldn’t last more than one season before it 
would be all racked out of line. The fact is, as I 
said before, the engine is too light for all practi- 
cal purposes.” 

“Mr. Olwin claimed that its lightness was an 
advantage,” protested Mr. Barnett meekly, for 
he had discovered, from his conversation, that his 
nephew actually had some knowledge of the con- 
struction of engines, and he was not so narrow as 
to refuse to receive information from a man 
young in years who had had special education. 

“How can it be an advantage?” asked Ed. in 
surprise. 

“Why, he said it would not break down 
bridges as a heavy engine was likely to do, and it 
wouldn’t sink into the mud, and being mounted 
on springs it would not jolt and jar while on the 


78 


road; therefore, it could be run at a higher rate 
of speed.” 

“He, of course, did not call your attention to 
the fact that the springs would allow the boiler 
and engine to bounce up and down like a spring 
buggy, and that it would have a tendency to 
break the gearing, did he?” asked Ed. 

“No, he did not say anything about that, but 
I should have thought of it myself.” 

“Besides, uncle, you don’t want an engine for 
a locomotive, but to do your threshing. You 
want one with large steaming capacity, which 
means power, and one that is substantially built, 
in order that it will stand up under the very 
rough usage to which a traction engine is sub- 
jected.” Thus Ed. continued to explain the 
superiority of the Case engine over the light, 
frail Gee Whizz. 

Ed. Roster’s explanation was so plausible and 
clear to Mr. Barnett that he was convinced that 
he had made a big mistake in not sticking to his 
convictions and purchasing a J. I. Case outfit. 

“The engine doesn’t seem to fill the bill, does 
it, Ed., but how about the thresher? It’s pretty 


79 


good for the price, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Barnett. 

“I don’t agree with you, uncle. There are sev- 
eral good machines on the market, but I want to 
call your attention to the essential points of a 
really good thresher. I take the J. I. Case 
thresher as a model because it comes from the 
largest and oldest threshing machine works in 
the country, and I believe that it leads all others 
in improvement. It combines whatever is best 
in any other machine with many principles pecul- 
iar to itself.” 

While Ed. explained the details, the men 
crowded around him in admiration of his clear 
exposition of the principles of mechanics, for he 
made things so simple that even the older ones, 
who were prejudiced at first against youth- 
ful precocity, were interested, and convinced. He 
answered question after question put to him by 
the men as to why a compound engine was more 
powerful and economical than a simple; why a 
cylinder of a certain diameter and stroke with a 
given amount of steam pressure and number of 
revolutions could not possibly develop the horse 
power claimed for the Gee Whizz engine. Nor 


80 


was he at all disconcerted when the questions 
turned to the thresher’s merits regarding clean- 
ing and separating capacity, construction, etc., 
for he put into use the technical learning gained 
at the agricultural college, coupled with the prac- 
tical mechanical experience acquired at the fac- 
tory of the J. 1. Case Threshing Machine Com- 
pany, of Racine, Wis., where he had spent his 
vacation, which was conclusive evidence to 
everyone present that the Agitator was the leader 
in its class and superior to the Gee Whizz 
thresher in every respect. 

In the midst of these explanations, the dinner 
horn sounded, and thus ended the profitless and 
expensive morning upon the Barnett farm. 


CHAPTER VIL 



HAT was the surprise of the Bar- 
nett crew when they returned to 
the field after dinner to dis- 
cover a group of men about the 
engine and thresher, and recog- 
nized Olwin in the midst of 
them, evidently in the act of getting up steam. 

“Let me at ’im, let me at ’im, bejabbers,” cried 
Irish Jim, as he elbowed his way to the front of 
his companions and climbed over the fence into 
the field. 

But just then they heard a frightened shout 
and beheld the group about the engine scattering 
in every direction, Olwin foremost in the flight. 
At the same instant there was a deafening report 
and high into the air rose the boiler, while other 
parts of the engine went crashing into the 
thresher and scattered its parts like jackstraws. 
A cloud of steam instantly enveloped the scene, 
from the midst of which issued groans of distress, 


82 


and when the steam vanished at last, there lay 
Olwin pinned to the ground beneath one end of 
the separator. 

All was excitement and panic, but it was found 
when the debris was lifted off of Olwin that he 
had escaped without serious injury, and the panic 
gave place to wrath, for it was learned that 
Olwin, anticipating the refusal of Mr. Barnett to 
accept the rig, had been endeavoring to trade it 
to Mr. Barnett’s neighbor for a six-year-old J. I. 
Case outfit, and had repeated his tactics of screw- 
ing down the safety valve and setting back the 
steam gauge, in order to force the engine with 
extremely high pressure of steam to do its work. 

“Served him right,” was the universal verdict. 
It was fortunate, indeed, for Olwin that it had 
been himself and not one of the other men who 
had been the victim of his own criminal deceit. 

The men by this time were in an ugly mood, 
which threatened even to overlook Olwin’s now' 
helpless condition, and strong hints were made to 
string him up to the nearest tree. At all events, 
Olwin found it expedient to exaggerate his injur- 
ies, and to beg to be conveyed quickly to Jen- 


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85 


kinsville, where he could secure medical atten- 
tion and incidentally police protection. 

The men whom Olwin had brought out to run 
the machine had disappeared to the last man, and 
none of Mr. Barnett’s men would consent to 
drive to town with the injured man, and, indeed, 
this was a welcome situation for all parties, for 
the men despised Olwin as much as he feared 
their vengeance. 

Dorothy, however, came to the rescue, being 
attracted to the scene by the terrific explosion, 
and volunteered to drive the bays to Jenkinsville, 
and no time was lost in hitching them to the car- 
riage and in starting. Yet it was four o’clock 
before the carriage turned out of the lane upon 
the main road toward the village, and it was 
necessary to drive slowly on account of the now 
aching bruises of its injured occupant. 

The trip was made in silence until just before 
they entered the village, when Dorothy turned 
toward her passenger and said: “Mr. Olwin, 
where is my cow Flossy and her calf?” 

Olwin denied all knowledge of them. 

“Where is my Flossy, I say?” she repeated 


86 


with the imperiousness of a queen, and poor 
Olwin’s spirit, having been knocked down by 
Irish Jim, and maimed by the boiler explosion, 
now quailed in dismay before the will of the red- 
cheeked girl who informed him that unless he 
agreed to deliver the cow and calf to her upon 
their arrival in the village he should get out of 
the carriage and walk the rest of the way as she 
had brought him as far as she had agreed — to 
the village. She pulled up the horses and 
brought the carriage to a standstill for him to 
decide, and as she did so, another vehicle, which 
had approached from the rear, attempted to pass. 
Its occupant was Fred. Brown, and he halted in 
surprise when he recognized Dorothy and her 
companion. He overheard Dorothy’s command 
and he was quick to champion so welcome a 
cause. 

Why not? Were not her eyes the brightest 
brown eyes in the country and had they ever 
flashed such fire as at that moment when she 
turned them from Olwin upon Fred? Was there 
ever a head with a toss so saucy or a pair of lips 
so firm and yet so tender? 


87 


Why shouldn’t Fred, draw his horse to a stop 
and call out, “Dorothy, can I be of any service to 
you?” And why shouldn’t his lieart beat with 
manly vigor and his muscles swell with the cour- 
age of a feudal knight when she responded, “Oh, 
Fred., I am glad to see you. Let’s make this 
horrid man give me back my cow and calf which 
he took for his good-for-nothing old threshing 
machine.” 

But before Fred, could really comprehend the 

situation Olwin muttered, “Take your 

cow. She’s in the pen at the depot; the calf’s 
there, too — ” 

“Hurrah, Fred., hitch your horse 
to the fence there by the mill and 
jump in here with me,” cried the 
girl as she clapped her hands and 
laughed, and Fred, lost no time in 
doing her bidding. It took but a 
few moments to get a written order 
from Olwin for Flossy and her calf, 
but it was an hour before they had 
found suitable shelter for the animals in the sta- 
ble of a friend. Then Fred, had some errands to 



88 


attend to and it was approaching dark before he 
rejoined Dorothy, as arranged, and they were 
ready to start home together. In the meantime, 
Dorothy had not been idle as she had seen that 
her pets were safely sheltered in the stable of 
Bengt Benson, and the old man laughed heartily 
when she told him the incident of the day and 
how she had recovered the animals. Then Bengt 
imparted some news to Dorothy which filled her 
with excitement. His son, who had been travel- 
ing south of home with an old J. I. Case 
thresher, had invested his profits of previous 
years in a brand new Case outfit, including the 
thresher, with self-feeder and wind-stacker 
attached, and a compound traction engine, the 
largest they make. “My son is in the house 
now,” added Mr. Benson. “He came home to- 
day to see if he could find out where Ed. Roster 
is. The machine is to pass through here on 
to-night’s midnight freight, and he is going on 
south with it. He couldn’t find Ed. in town 
to-day and he wants him to go into partnership 
with him and take charge of the new outfit.” 

“He mustn’t go south with that machine,” said 


89 


Dorothy, determinedly, “Where is he? Cousin 
Ed. is at our house and if he wants his help he 
must bring the machine to where Ed. is. I must 
see him at once.’^ 

Needless to say, Dorothy did see the thresher- 
man, and the outcome was that by eight o’clock 
p. m. the telegraph wires bore the order to stop 
the car with the new Case threshing outfit at 
Jenkinsville, and ere the Barnett family had fin- 
ished breakfast next morning they were surprised 
by the advent of the mammoth thresher, which 
looked in contrast with the demolished Gee 
Whizz like a mastiff beside a rat terrier. 

Dorothy had not told her father what she had 
done. She stood in awe of him and was not sure 
he would approve, but she had confided the 
secret to Cousin Ed. in whispers the evening 
before. She knew he would shield her, if neces- 
sary, as much as he could. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Ed. Roster was king of the field. He did not 
put on airs nor strut, and he was the hero among 
the men all the more on that account, and they 
watched him with a great deal of satisfaction as 
he and Ole Benson set up the big Case engine 
and thresher ready for threshing. Ole was busy 
getting up steam and Ed. worked like a beaver 
on the machine, so absorbed in interest in the 
new improvements that for half an hour he 
scarcely said a word to anybody except to his 
Uncle John, with whom in the meanwhile he dis- 
cussed the thresher’s superior points. 

When all was ready, he shouted, “Go ahead, ^ 
Ole.’’ 

“Say, you fellows seem to be onto your job. 
It didn’t take you more than half an hour to set 
the thresher, get up steam, and start her, and yes- 
terday we monkeyed all day trying to get that 
Gee Whizz set right,” said one of the men. 

“It isn’t so much the men as it is the machine 


91 


that makes the difference,” replied Ed. “In set- 
ting up this thresher all that is necessary is to 
level the rear wheels; the front end always level- 
ing itself with the rear regardless of how the 
wheels stand, and the machine is then ready to 
run. 

Ed. now instructed the pitchers, who were sta- 
tioned on the stacks on either side of the 
machine, to start to throw the bundles on the 
self-feeder, cautioning them to throw the bundles 
onto the carrier straight, and thus the threshing 
with the new Case rig began. 

Irish Jim had been looking into the cylinder 
for some time as it was chewing up the bundles 
in its insatiate maw. “Bejabbers, I’d hate to be 
the dentist w'ho had to kape your teetli in order, 
you spalpeen,” he remarked, addressing the 
thresher. 

“That’s not much of a job,” replied Ed., laugh- 
ing. “In this letter from Nicollet County from 
the man who had the Gee Whizz thresher he 
states that he had to put in over four hundred 
new teeth during the season, and you will find 
that this will not be the case with this machine,” 
added Ed. “But the proof of the pudding is in 


92 


the eating thereof, and not in the chewing of the 
rag; see how smoothly she works.” 

The machine had settled down to work so 
steadily and so persistently that its monotonous 
song was unbroken until noon, and one thousand 
four hundred bushels of “No. 1, Hard,” was 
ready for the “puts and calls” and margins of the 
Chamber of Commerce; by night one thousand 
six hundred and eighty-seven bushels more had 
been added, making the day’s run of three thou- 
sand and eighty-seven bushels, with a new 
machine and a green crew. 

Another day and another passed while the tire- 
less maw of the monster “Case” continued to 
masticate and swallow grain as fast as the bun- 
dles could be tossed upon the self-feeder. 

Farmers from all parts of the neighboring 
country heard of the improved new outfit on the 
Barnett farm and came to engage it for weeks 
ahead, as nothing else had ever worked so 
smoothly or done such rapid and clean work, and 
many a farmer had grown nervous about his 
threshing as he thought of winter approaching 
and all machines busy. Even chronic “calamity 













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95 


howlers” stood before this evidence of the supre- 
macy of brains over muscle and forgot to grum- 
ble while witnessing its magnificent and ceaseless 
grind. 

“Backward, turn backward, oh time in your 
flight, and give us a flail again just for to-night.’’ 
had been the thrilling climax of the local school 
teacher at a recent public meeting while' making 
a semi-political harangue and tirade against 
“plutocratic corporations” and inventors of 
labor-saving machinery, and as Ed. Roster stood 
to-day beside the triumph of threshing machin- 
ery, this King of Labor Savers, he made a mental 
estimate of how much it would cost in actual 
wages, how much in flails, how much in thresh- 
ing floors, how much in worry and disappoint- 
ment, how much in degradation of fellow-men in 
turning them again to doing what mere 
machines, mere beaters of grain, can do better 
than can human beings; how much it would cost 
in money and in progress of civilization to go 
back to the days before the threshers or to put 
in a tangible form the vapid theories of the orator 
of retrogression. 


96 


No wonder that the J. 1. Case Threshing 
Machine Company, the largest builders of thresh- 
ers and thresher engines in the United States, 
have adopted for their emblem and trade mark 
the same glorious bird that typifies the greatest 
nation that ever existed — THE BALD EAGLE 
— the king of birds, the one whose birthday is 
the Fourth of July, and whose death day will be 
the thirty-second day of February, or never. As 
an under-current to such thoughts as these, Ed.’s 
mind went persistently back and forth between 
the farm adjoining his Uncle John’s and a certain 
great machine shop in a Wisconsin city by Lake 
Michigan. 

Strange connection! Stranger still the ob- 
jects thereby connected, for just across the 
field by an upper window overlooking the 
threshing field sat the daintiest little “crimson 
clover blossom” that was ever kissed by the fresh 
country zephyrs or by the guileless lips of youth. 
Ed. knew that Margaret was sitting there by the 
window with her sewing, watching him and 
thinking of their wedding-day, which, although 
indefinite in the future, they hoped with lovers’ 


97 


impatience might not long be postponed. It was 
all dependent on Ed.’s business arrangements 
and he eagerly discussed his plans not only with 
his sweetheart but with Uncle John Barnett. 

Ed. had “two strings to his bow,” as he 
expressed it. He had made application for work 
in the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company’s 
shops and had intimated a hope that he might 
find a better position than he had had at first. 
His other hope lay in his own invention, which 
he had completed only a month before — a small 
portable elevator on wheels — to be used for 
weighing, cleaning and loading grain. 

It was truly a clever contrivance, and 
while he knew that but one invention 
in a thousand ever brings profit to the 
inventor he still hoped that his would 
escape being numbered with the 999. 

His Uncle John advised him to rely 
upon his hope of a permanent posi- 
tion with the Case people; Margaret 
quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of his 
elevator scheme. 



98 


Ed. was not a dreamer, and until he had fallen 
seriously in love he had not been accustomed to 
building air castles. Yet, carried away by Mar- 
garet’s enthusiasm, he began to feel that perhaps, 
after all, his elevator would bring him wealth. 

Why should it not? 

Were not farmers everywhere suffering from 
the monopoly of great elevator companies? In 
small towns and at country stations there could 
be but one large elevator because the cost was so 
great, but his portable elevator, which would cost 
only about $600.00, would revolutionize the 
business of handling grain. Farmers could store 
their own grain upon their farms and thus keep 
it out of the “visible* supply” of the markets of the 
world until those markets were favorable; then, 
with a train of grain cars and two or three of 
these portable elevators brought to the station 
on a flat-car (or by team), the grain could be 
quickly handled directly from the farmer’s wag- 
ons to the cars and rushed to the market. One 
of his elevators would weigh and load six cars 
per day at a cost of only thirty cents for gasoline 
to run the engine, and it required only one man 


99 


to run the engine and weigh the grain as it was 
dumped in from the farmer’s wagon and another 
man inside of the car to shovel the grain away 
from the chute, the same as when it comes from 
a regular elevator. 

“Why, just think of it, dearie,” said the young 
inventor, “these elevators can be owned either 
by commission firms or by farmers or by elevator 
companies. They may be useful on the farm in 
putting the grain into storehouses and in loading 
it out of the storehouses into wagons. They 
need not be antagonistic to the big elevators but 
as supplementary to them to make it possible to^ 
load cars anywhere along the railroad. It will 
save miles of teaming.” 

“When do you expect to begin building the 
elevators?” asked Margaret. 

“I don’t know whether I can build them at all 
until I hear from my patent,” he answered. “I 
have agreed with a commission firm of Minne- 
apolis to give them an interest in the invention 
on condition that they secure the patent for me, 
and they are investigating it now.” 


100 


Thus the hours went by until midnight came, 
and with it Fred Brown’s mischievious imitation 
of a crowing rooster, warning the lovers that day 
might dawn before they had finished their dis- 
cussion. 

But Ed. was not the one to shirk his work, 
even if he were in love. He had agreed with his 
uncle and Ole Benson to take charge of his 
uncle’s threshing, and on the morning following 
this long talk with his sweetheart he was at his 
work as early and as vigorously as ever. 

All day long his thoughts wandered back con- 
stantly to their evening’s talk. He seemed to 
realize more than ever the need of securing 
steady and reliable employment. 

While he had hopes that something might 
develop in connection with his invention, he had 
the good sense to recognize the fact that all 
inventions were mere experiments upon the mar- 
ket, and to feel that a steady, moderately profit- 
able position in an established concern might be 
even more desirable at his age than a speculative 
venture with a new and untried enterprise. 


101 


Then would come moments when he would 
remember how perfectly his elevator worked, 
how .simple and economical it was in its con- 
struction, and he would forget his resolutions to 
hold himself steady, “and would go off his feet,” 
as he expressed it, in his exorbitant hopes of 
quick fortune. 

“For Margaret’s sake, I want it,” he said to 
himself. 

Cousin Dorothy was in the habit of making 
almost daily trips to Jenkinsville to bring sup- 
plies for the family and the threshers, and Ed. 
was ever in hopes that she. would bring him some 
expected mail, which might end his suspense. 

It seemed an endless afternoon for him, as the 
big thresher worked hour after hour with such 
monotonous smoothness. He almost wished 
something would get out of order, for he was so 
restless ; but it did not, and the sun was below the 
horizon ere the buggy containing Dorothy was 
seen coming slowly across the prairie. 

It was with almost exasperating deliberate- 
ness that Dorothy responded to his anxious 
inquiry regarding his mail, and then she handed 


102 


him three letters — one from the T. I. Case 
Threshing Machine Company, offering him not 
his old place in the shop, but the foremanship of 
the great engine department, a position far 
beyond his highest hopes. Another one was 
from Farwell & Bench, patent attorneys, stating 
that all of the preliminary papers in the applica- 
tion for a patent on his elevator had been filed, 
and they enclosed a clipping from the Scientific 
American commending the device as thoroughly 
practical. Messrs. Farwell & Bench expressed 
confidence in the success of the application for a 
patent. The third letter was from the senior 
partner of the commission firm w^hich had been 
investigating the practicability of the portable 
elevator. It expressed great satisfaction in all 
the tests and examinations made, and the firm 
desired to enter into negotiations at once with a 
view of acquiring an interest in the patent, and 
manufacturing the elevators under Mr. Roster’s 
superintendency. 

Surely Ed.’s prospects were bright, and while 
he is revolving the matter in his mind and seek- 
ing in consultation with Margaret a wise deci* 


103 


sion, let us go back to Jenkinsville, and watch 
the acts of Olwin, who has sworn dire vengeance 
upon the unwitting cause of his defeat, as well as 
upon all others who had watched the disgraceful 
predicament. 


CHAPTER IX. 


AVE OLWIN was in an ugly mood 
when Dorothy brought him to his 
hotel in Jenkinsville that evening 
after the explosion. 

Sore, disgusted with himself, 
chagrined at the outcome of his 
plans, he was nettled above all that 
after being disgraced and jeered at 
by the threshers he should be thus conquered by 
a mere girl and compelled to give up a cow and 
calf which he could easily have sold for $50.00. 
He slunk into the bar-room of the hotel and 
called for a drink of whiskey ; in fact, he took two 
or three drinks as he sat beside the little table in 
the rear of the room, scowling and cursing, and 
he did not exactly recollect how it all came about, 
but somehow the next thing he remembered he 
was lying in a bed in his cheerless room at the 
hotel and the sun was just going down. 

He got upon his feet and after many failures 
succeeded in dressing himself. His hands were 



105 


unsteady, his head was aching, and he felt decid- 
edly seasick. He was confident he needed some 
more liquor to brace himself up. He staggered 
down stairs and tried to enter the bar-room, but 
the door was locked; he hammered and kicked 
on the door until the landlord, emerging from 
another doorway, told him the bar was closed. 

“Wazzer-mazzer?” he inquired. 

'‘Why this is Sunday. We do not keep open 
here on Sunday, Mr. Olwin.'^ 

“Thish Sunday? Thish ish Wedneshday. 
You’re mishtaken, Mr. Landlord. Thish ish 
Wednesday, and I want a drink.” 

“No, this is Sunday. It was Wednesday when 
you went to sleep, but it’s Sunday now, Mr. 
Olwin. Come in this way and keep still about 
it.” 

And the landlord led the still tipsy guest 
through the dining room and into the bar room 
by another door. 

Once inside, he found fifteen or twenty men, 
some sitting at the tables drinking beer and 
smoking, and others standing before the bar dis- 
cussing politics and crops, and ever and anon 


106 


calling for various liquors. Olwin soon secured 
a glass of whisky and after drinking it down he 
began to feel his senses righting themselves in 
his addled brain. His eyes wandered about the 
room and suddenly fell upon a familiar face; it 
was that of Jake McCoy, the expert engineer 
whom he had discharged a few days before 
because he ran the Gee Whizz engine into the 
ditch while taking it out to the Barnett farm. 

“Hello, Jake. I say, is that you, Jake McCoy? 
How are you, old fellow? Come here and have 
something.” 

Jake was not unwilling to make peace with his 
old employer, and the two men were soon seated 
beside a table, while Olwin poured out in 
drunken garrulousness the story of his failure. 

Jake was intensely sympathetic and added 
interest to Olwin’s tale of woe by informing him 
that since Thursday there had been a big J. I. 
Case outfit at Barnett’s. He had seen it 
unloaded at Jenkinsville the very next morning 
after the Gee Whizz explosion and was told by 
some of the thresher men that that was where it 


was going. 


107 


Even McCoy had never heard Dave Olwin 
swear as he did when he was informed of this 
state of affairs. The news seemed to sober him 
instantly, and he straightened up in his chair and 
brought his clinched fist down on the table with 
a blow which rattled the glasses off upon the 
floor. There was a cold and wickdd gleam in his 
eyes now in place of their former maudlin 
expression, and he swore in an undertone that 
that thresher should not stay on that farm 
another day. 

“In the language of the statesman, what are 
you going to do about it?” asked McCoy. 

Olwin made no answer to this for some 
moments, but sat staring at McCoy with a pierc- 
ing and calculating look which made the victim 
squirm uneasily. 

Finally Olwin leaned over to McCoy and said: 
“Jake, I always liked you. You and I have 
worked together for a good many years. What 
have you been doing with yourself since I fired 
you the other day?” 

“Nothing much. I struck a job as engineer 
down at the stone quarry last Friday when the 


108 


regular engineer was sick, but I guess he’ll be 
back to work to-morrow.” 

'‘Jake, would you like your old job back?” 
asked Olwin, never for a moment removing his 
piercing gaze from McCoy’s face. 

“Yes, Mr. Olwin, I would. I have worked for 
you for so many years that it don’t seem natural 
to work for anybody else.” 

“Well, Jake, I’ve got some other work besides 
running an engine, and whoever gets your old 
job has to bring his nerve with him and be ready 
to do what I tell him, and — keep mum about it. 
Do you understand me, Jake?” 

“Yes.” 

“You want work? I’ve got a job you can do, 
but — can I trust you, old boy? It is an easy job 
if you do it right, but if you waver or make any 
mistake, you will have to look out for your 
bacon.” 

“I’m no coward.” 

“I’m glad to hear you say that — Here, bar- 
tender, fetch us some more toddy! — Jake, that 

Case outfit on the Barnett farm has 

got to stop. Do you understand me? I say it’s . 



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got to stop, and when Dave Olwin says it’s got 
to stop, it stops, doesn’t it, Jake? Here’s to you, 
old boy!” 

“Well, what’s it worth to stop it?” asked 
McCoy, shifting his chair a little closer to 
Olwin’s. 

“That depends. Can you stop it, Jake?” 

Jake looked around nervously, and leaning 
close to Olwin, said: “I can blow it up.” 

“Oh, they won’t let you get near the engine. 
There’s a young smart alick from the Agricul- 
tural College out there — -a nephew of Old Barn- 
ett — and he understands all about the engine and 
thresher. There is no chance to monkey with 
the engine.” 

“Then I can fix the thresher — put a plug in 
the cylinder, or something, so that when they 
start up it will be smashed to pieces.” 

“That won’t do, Jake. They would discover 
it before your plug had hurt that big cylinder. 
Think again — can’t you blow up the blamed 
engine with a can of powder in the fire-box or 
something of that kind?” 

“Now you’ve struck it. Let’s load some of the 


112 


sheaves with dynamite, so that when they go into 
the thresher the dynamite will be exploded and 
blow it to pieces. I know where there is a lot of 
dynamite cartridges down at the quarry and if I 
can get one of them, good-bye Case thresher.” 

“Jake, you’re the stuf¥. If you’ll do that. I’ll 
give you $25.00 for the job, out of my own 
pocket, and if you succeed in blowing up the 

thing. I’ll give you your old place again and 

raise your wages. Where did you say the dyna- 
mite was? I’ll go with you and help you find it. 
Wait; let’s have some whiskey.” 

It was half past nine o’clock when the two con- 
spirators emerged from the rear door of the sal- 
oon, and hurried along the street, now filled with 
men and women, who, with pious thoughts, were 
slowly wending their way homeward from the 
House of God. 

Suddenly McCoy stopped. “Wait,” he said in 
a whisper. “What if the dynamite hurts some of 
the men? Why, it might kill somebody.” 

“Oh, shut up, you baby. It won’t hurt any- 
thing except the machine. Didn’t the boiler 
explode the other day and tear the whole Gee 


113 


Whizz to pieces? Was anybody badly hurt? 
What do we care for those fellows, anyhow? 
They wanted to lick me the other day — now Til 
get even with them. Are you a coward or are 
you coming along?” 

McCoy hung back for a while, but when the 
$25.00 reward was doubled and he was reassured 
as to his increase of wages, he forgot his con- 
scientious scruples and was soon in the tool- 
house at the quarry securing the necessary imple- 



114 


ments for forcing open the solid door of the 
dynamite shed. 

After some trouble they secured one of the 
dangerous cartridges, and carefully placing it in 
McCoy’s pocket the burglarious conspirators 
hastened back to the main highway. 

“How far is it out there?” asked McCoy. 

“It is seven miles; go straight out this road 
until you come to the little school house after 
you cross Buffalo river. Then go on until you 
see a clump of trees on one side of the road 
and a lane leading up to the Barnett’ house. It 
is a big, brown farm house with a mansard roof. 
You will see the thresher somewhere in the field 
at the right of the house.” 

“Oh, that’s all right, but ain’t you going, too?” 
asked McCoy. 

“No; one’s enough. I’m sick. I’m just get- 
ting over a three day’s drunk, you know, and 
don’t feel much like walking.” 

“What’s the matter with' my getting a rig?” 

“Oh, you don’t want to give yourself away, do 
you, by hiring a horse and buggy? Go on, you 
can walk out there in two hours, and get back 


115 


in two hours. Did you ever make fifty doPars 
before in four hours’ work? Go on.” 

And so the men parted, McCoy the willing tool 
of a cold-blooded murderer, for Olwin well knew 
the deadly character of the bomb and the cer- 
tainty that if it exploded inside the thresher, 
someone must be hurt, if not killed, by the flying 
debris. He hoped it would be Ed. Roster and 
Irish Jim; he little cared who else was hurt. 

When McCoy had left him, Olwin returned to 
his potations at the bar, for his nerves were not 
strengthened by the excitement of his dastardly 
plot. 


CHAPTER X. 


Was there ever a villain who did not over- 
estimate his own shrewdness? Who can escape 
retributive justice? Somewhere I have seen a 
picture of a scoundrel seeking to hide from the 
detection of society and forgetting that he has 
but one pair of eyes with which to watch the 
chance for detection while society has its mil- 
lions of eyes, its millions of ears, and its millions 
of minds at work upon his clumsy schemes. 
How crude, how clumsy, how certain of failure 
seem the most cunning of plots when laid bare, 
and what recklessness would attempt the most 
depraved to do battle with civilized society ! 
For it is not the murderer’s victim who becomes 
the murderer’s opponent. It is the combined 
forces of Law and Civilization. 

Dave Olwin was at heart a murderer — a most 
cowardly one. He lacked the brute courage of 
a Blixt, and imagined he had the cunning of a 
Harry Hayward. Yet he was wanting of even 


117 


Hayward’s control over his appetite for that 
which, when put into the mouth, “Doth steal 
away his brains.” 

When Olwin returned to the bar room he 
found most of the men who had been there earlier 
in the evening, and in a vague way he recognized 
Charlie Arnold, the man who had first detected 
him in doctoring the steam gauge of the Gee 
Whizz engine. The sight of Arnold brought 
back angry recollections of his troubles, and 
going up to him he made an effort to enter into 
a conversation, with the fixed determination to 
quarrel with him, but Arnold, seeing his condi- 
tion, tried to avoid him by saying that he did not 
care to talk. 

“You won’t talk with me, won’t you? I’ll bet a 
dollar you’re afraid of me.” 

“No, but I don’t want to have anything to do 
with you. Get away from me, now.” 

“Huh! Think yourself smart, don’t you? I’ll 
bet you’re as smart — ^why, you must be as smart 
as that young rooster — that young Roster — out 
on the Barnett farm. Why don’t you go out 
there now and get your job back again? Eh? 


118 


They’ve got a Case thresher out there. You 
look just like a chump that would work on a 

Case thresher. By , I wish you were to be 

there to-morrow at work on that Case thresher, 
you!” 

“Why do you?” 

“’Cause I do, I say. Why don’t you go out, 
so as to get your head blown off?” 

“Oh, I guess there wouldn’t be any danger of 
that, if I did. I’ve run Case engines for ten 
years, and I guess I know how to handle them 
by this time.” 

“Yes, that’s what I said. You’re one of them 

Case toadies and smart alicks, but I just 

wish you’d go out there and get your whole head 
blown off with the rest of them. That’s all.” 

“What makes you think that the engine will 
blow up to-morrow, Olwin?” asked Arnold. 

“Who said anything about the engine blowing 
up? No, the engine won’t blow up; maybe the 
strawstack will blow up; maybe the water-barrel 
will burst; maybe the threshing machine will 

explode, you smart alick. I never said a 

word about any boiler blowing up, did T, 


119 


bartender? Here, give me another whiskey, and 
give this smarty what he wants to drink. Whoop ! 
Who cares for expenses! To-day we eat. 
to-night we drink, and to-morrow we all blow up. 
Whoopee 

And the drunken fellow sunk into a chair after 
he had swallowed a quarter of a pint of whiskey, 
and was snoring loudly when the daylight 
streaked into the window of the saloon on Mon- 
day morning. 

Arnold did not understand Olwin’s drunken 
allusions, but when he heard early in the morn- 
ing that there had been a burglary at the stone 
quarry, and that the burglars had stolen only 
some dynamite, he remembered Olwin’s myster- 
ious words. His suspicions were strengthened 
when the manager of the stone quarry came to 
town and engaged him to take the place of 
McCoy as engineer. He knew McCoy; he had 
seen him last with Olwin in the saloon. Olwin 
and McCoy had left the saloon together, and 
Olwin had returned alone, raving about expected 
explosions, while to-day McCoy was missing, 
and so was. some of the dynamite. To Arnold 
the case was clear but he feared to tell his sus- 


120 


picions. The police believed that the burglary 
had been done by some bank robbers, and great 
stress was placed upon certain clues which would 
lead to their capture when, as expected, they 
would undertake to open the bank vault next 
night. 

Arnold did suggest his suspicions to one of 
the quarry men, who was so impressed with their 
plausibility that he at once told others, and while 
they were discussing the situation at the quarry, 
Fred Brown rode by on horseback en route to 
town after the doctor for his mother, who had 
been taken ill during the night. Fred stopped 
to hear the news, and then rode on, attaching lit- 
tle importance to Arnold’s story of Olwin’s 
drunken threats. 

Dorothy Barnett drove up to the post office 
soon after Fred’s arrival, and Fred repeated the 
news of the burglary at the stone quarry to her, 
but said nothing of Olwin’s threats. 

“Oh, Fred,” said Dorothy, “won’t you do me 
a favor? My horse lost a shoe as I drove into 
town. Won’t you please take him around to 
Peterson’s shop, and have him shod while I am 
doing my shopping?” 


121 


“Certainly, Dorothy. Then, maybe you will 
allow me to ride home with you. I can hitch my 
horse behind your buggy, you know.” 

“Well, we’ll see about that. I’ll meet you here 
in an hour, and maybe I’ll let you ride your horse 
beside the buggy.” 

After Fred had left, Dorothy proceeded to the 
grocery, and there she found a group of men dis- 
cussing the burglary. Some of the men had been 
in the bar room the night before, and had 
observed McCoy and Olwin together, and one 
even claimed to have heard snatches of their con- 
versation. Others recalled Olwin’s talk with 
Arnold, and, proud of their detective astuteness, 
they supplied from their imagin- 
ation whatever links were miss- 
ing to fasten the diabolical 
scheme upon Olwin. 

The men did not notice Doro- 
thy standing near, nor realize 
the awful fear which was stealing 
over the girl as they talked. She 
remained fixed in sickening ter- 
ror, as one of the men dilated 



122 


upon the circumstantial evidence of the plot. 
Then a farmer came in, who heard a remark that 
McCoy was suspected, and had disappeared, and 
wanted to know what sort of a looking man 
McCoy was. 

“Oh, he's about your height, and he talks 
through his nose,” was the answer. 

“Well, I believe that I met that fellow about 
five miles out from town about half past ’leven 
last night. I was driving home and he stopped 
me, and asked how far it was to Barnett's,” 
answered the farmer. 

“Didn't I tell you so? I'll bet Charlie Arnold 
is right, and I'm going to tell the constable,” 
said one of the talkers, as he started from the 
store. 

This aroused Dorothy to action. She had been 
faint with fright before, and now she was all 
alertness. 

Quick! Where was Fred? No time must be 
lost in reaching home. In her mind's eye she 
saw her father lying mangled by the awful explo- 
sion. Her cousin, her father, the men! Oh, 
what had happened? 


123 


She knew not what catastrophe might have 
befallen them. Perhaps it was not too late to 
warn them. Where was her buggy? She remem- 
bered that she had sent her horse by Fred to the 
blacksmith shop, three blocks away. The horse 
must now be unhitched and in the hands of the 
farrier, and in no condition to travel within an 
hour. She started to run to find Fred, then rec- 
ognized his horse hitched in front of the post 
office, and without a moment’s hesitation, she 
rushed over to it, seized the bridle, threw one 
stirrup over the saddle, swung herself upon the 
horse’s back, and struck his flanks with the 
double hitching strap. 

Stung with surprise at such unaccustomed 
treatment, the young animal reared once, and 
then plunged madly forward. Men upon the 
streets shouted to her to stop, but that only 
added to the excitement of the horse. Down 
past the blacksmith shop they flew! the girl ply- 
ing the strap at every spring. 

Was she mad? 

Fred Brown saw her as she sped by the shop. 
He could not believe his senses. He ran to the 


124 


middle of the street to cry after her, but gazed in 
speechless wonder. 

The whole street was in a panic. Men came 
running, shouting, expecting that at every leap 
the girl would be hurled headlong to her death. 

But never an instant did she falter; never an 
instant did she cease to urge the maddenec^ ani- 
mal to a greater speed. 

“She cannot pass that bend in the road!” some 
one shouted. 

But see how she swings her lithe body far over 
toward the inside of the curve. She seems riv- 
eted to the saddle. 

The turn was passed. The men would have 
cheered, but the strain was too intense. 

“Follow her! Follow her!” at last cried Fred 
Brown, and a score of throats took up the cry. 

Smaller and smaller shrank the horse and his 
rider as the distance increased, and now they had 
reached the level stretch of the prairie road, and 
that throbbing motion of the rise and fall of the 
gallop was all that could be distinguished ahead 
of a cloud of dust. 

It was like the quick and ever quicker pulse 
beats of a great fear. 


125 


“Hurry up! Follow her! She will.be killed. 
Oh my darling!” cried the frenzied lover, for in 
that supreme moment Fred. Brown cared naught 
who knew his passion for that dear girl, though 
he had never dared breathe it aloud before, nor 
even confess it to her. 

Rushing to the nearest vehicle upon the streets, 
he seized the lines from the hands of Doctor 
Davis, and pressed the doctor into the pursuit 
with a vehement force which brooked no denial. 
It was a race for life. A half dozen other vehicles, 
and several other riders on horse-back took up 
the pursuit, and none doubted that death was 
ahead. 

“There she goes! She must be a mile away! 
No she is nearly two miles. That young horse 
is the swiftest in the country. He has the blood 
of Jay-Eye-vSee. Look at him fly!” exclaimed 
Fred., plying the lash to the doctor’s team. The 
other pursuers were soon distanced. 

“Look! He has settled down to a steadier 
gait now. He is tiring out. No, she is whipping 
and urging him on. Never before was he struck 
by the lash, and I would kill anyone else who 


126 


I 


would strike him. Ah! Has he stumbled? No; 
there he goes. Great Heavens! If he should 
fall!” 

Mile after mile swung back of Dorothy. Now 
she had crossed the bridge, passed the school 
house, the grove, the brook, the Brown farm. 

Here the horse essayed to halt, but again the 
sharp lash stung his flanks, and on he dashed, 
and now she strains her eyes ahead. 

What is that smoke upon her father’s harvest 
field? Is it death or safety? Has she come in 
time? For a moment she felt that the crisis was 
passed, and the surcease of the awful strain made 
her sick. She reeled and almost lost her hold, but 
as she swayed she remembered it all again, and 
once more belabored the horse. 

No, she is not too late, but every moment 
becomes all the more precious. Should she come 
so far to see her father and her cousin and the 
men killed by the awful dynamite? 

“Now leap!” she shouts, and the horse springs 
over the ditch and on across the stubble witli 
fearful bounds. 

Mr. Barnett saw her coming and ran forward, 









129 


calling to her to stop. She pulled the rein. The 
horse shakes its head viciously, and swerves a rod 
out of its straight course, as it passes her father 
and rushes in blind fright directly toward the 
threshing machine. 

“Whoa! Stop!” But she cried too late. 

The strange whirr of the big red monster, the 
hissing of the steam from the safety valve, the 
shouting and gesticulating of all the men were 
more than enough. 

A final plunge upon its haunches, and 

“Great Horrors! What has happened?” 

An awful sound, like the shock of a cannon! 
The air was full of dust and chaff and flying de- 
bris. The horse was dead, and twenty feet away 
lay the motionless form of the girl, while Ed. 
Roster and two other threshermen were bleeding 
from many wounds. 

Had the boiler exploded? No, the steam was 
still hissing from the safety valve, and the 
thresher was still doing its work — but see! The 
self-feeder has disappeared and the front of the 
thresher is partly torn away. 

The dynamite had been well hidden in the 


130 


sheaf of wheat, but instead of its getting* inside 
of the machine before exploding, the band-cutter 
knives of the self-feeder had struck it just as Dor- 
othy had approached. 

Poor, brave girl! To think that you should be 
the chief victim of your own efforts to save 
others ! 

Fred. Brown and the doctor saw the dust 
raised by the explosion, three miles away, but in 
ten minutes they were upon the scene, and 
helped to carry Dorothy’s apparently lifeless 
body to the house, after a hasty examination by 
the surgeon. 


CHAPTER XL 


As Fred Brown helped the doctor and her 
father to lift the unconscious form of Dorothy 
and carry her slowly and gently to the house, he 
believed her to be dead. The thought stunned 
him. He shed no tears; he did not think of sor- 
row; the awful weight upon him seemed the bur- 
den of the whole world. 

Dorothy was dead! 

Surely she knew of his love for her — yet he 
remembered now that he had never told her. 

Did he not feel in her presence — that she knew 
— and that she was glad? The time had not yet 
come when he could marry, and until then — but 
now Dorothy was dead. 

He had never thought of that possibility 
before. Once when he was sick, she had sent 
flowers to him from her garden, and he felt then 
that he must tell her how he loved them for her 
sake — but he never did. He had only thanked 
her. 


132 


He stood watching- the doctor now as he 
chafed her arms and listened for her heart beats. 

“I can find no outward wounds; I fear that she 
has some internal injury/’ said the physician. 
^‘This long unconsciousness means something 
more than appears here.” 

Just as he spoke, the girl’s hand twitched, her 
lips parted, and the doctor, placing one ear upon 
her breast, said that the heart was fluttering. 

Slowly and feebly she began to breathe, and 
her weeping parents hastened to bring water and 
cloths, as the doctor directed. 

Then she opened her eyes and looked around 
in a dazed manner and saw her parents standing, 
with pale and anxious faces, at her bedside. 

“Where am I? What has happened — Oh, I 
remember — the horse — the dynamite — I remem- 
ber. Did I get there in time? Where are Father 
and Ed? Was anybody hurt? Where’s Fred? 
Tell me! Tell me!” 

“Here I am. Darling,” exclaimed Fred., re- 
gardless of those who heard him. 

Impulsively, he leaned over and kissed her lips 
— the first lover’s kiss, and he chafed her hand 









which lay nearest to him. Her hand nestled in 
his own like a frightened bird in its nest, while 
its trembling grew calmer. There was no shade 
of embarrassment, only a gentle wave of color 
suffused the pallid cheeks of the girl, and she 
sought again to recall the memories of the catas- 
trophe. 

“Where are father and Ed. ?” she said, turning 
to her mother. “Tell me!’^ 

“Nobody was badly hurt,” interrupted the 
doctor. “You are tired after your ride. Can 
you swallow this now? I want you to rest and 
go to sleep a little while. See, here are your 
father and Mr. Brown. There, now, shut your 
eyes . ” 

It was several days before the danger was 
passed in Dorothy’s condition, and weeks before 
her convalesence had merged into her accus- 
tomed strength and vivacity, but she likes to 
tease her lover even now by telling him that she 
doesn’t believe he would ever have told his love 
if the confession had not been blown out of him 
with dynamite. 


136 


There is little more to tell of Farmer Barnett’s 
threshing. 

The threshing machine was found to be but 
slightly injured by the explosion of dynamite. 
The self-feeder was totally demolished, but a new 
self-feeder was easily supplied upon a telegraphic 
order to G. W. Penn, the General Agent for the 
J. 1. Case Threshing Machine Company, at Min- 
neapolis, so that the work of threshing the rest 
of the grain was resumed in three days, by which 
time Ed. Roster had sufficiently recovered from 
his injuries to enable him to work. 

Both Olwin and McCoy have already stood 
trial upon the charge of conspiracy to kill, and 
are now serving time in the Stillwater peniten- 
tiary — Olwin ten years, and McCoy, six. 

The Gee Whizz Company sent a man with 
instructions to pay Mr. Barnett all the money he 
had paid to Olwin upon the Gee Whizz rig, and 
also to get what was left of the outfit to Jenkins- 
ville and ship it to their factory. This was a very 
welcome outcome to Mr. Barnett, and all others 
concerned. 

Farmer Barnett had 20,000 bushels of No, 1 


137 


hard from 480 acres and although the price of 
wheat has been low, he claims that he cleared 
more money than did any of his neighbors who 
had larger farms, and a great deal more than 
those who plunged into other crops not staple. 

But both Mr. Barnett and Fred Brown are as 
busy this winter as they were in the summer — no 
idle days for energetic workers. 

Had I told you that Fred has rented a part of 
his father’s farm? No? Well, he has, and is 
going to make a success of it, for he is winter- 
feeding a lot of young cattle, which will be fat 
for the spring, market. Mr. Barnett has bought 
hogs for the same purpose, and he and Fred are 
deeply interested in all the problems of live-stock 
fattening. 

Ed. Roster wisely chose the foremanship of the 
Engine Works of the J. I. Case Threshing 
Machine Company for this winter, while he con- 
tinues to study upon the perfecting of his port- 
able elevators in his spare hours, and especially 
while waiting for the Minneapolis commission 
firm to arrange the necessary capital for the man- 
ufacture of them. 


138 


And now it is evening of the last day of the old 
year. I must hasten to close my story, for I 
have an engagement for this evening — one which 
I would not miss for a great deal. 

Have you ever seen a double wedding? I 
never have, and to-night there is to be one at the 
little church near the Barnett farm, and I am to 
be there. 

And the brides? Why, they are Dorothy and 
Margaret, of course, and happy, happy, indeed, 
may be their new year and many other years to 
follow. 






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